A TORY councillor has queried the cost to Warrington Borough Council of Freedom of Information requests.
Coun Paul Kennedy (pictured) says some councils have started charging for the information in certain circumstances and wonders whether Warrington should look at doing so.
He also queried the cost of the council being a member of the Local Government Association.
On being told the council paid £54,000 a year for membership of the LGA he asked that officers carefully scrutinise the benefits of membership to see if the authority, its officers and the council taxpayers were getting value for money.
Coun Paul Campbell, executive member for finance, said the Freedom of Information Act was an excellent idea.
Transparency was something everyone wanted.
He said in 2009-10, the council had received 105 FOI requests but in the first quarter of 2010-11 the total had already reached 110.
It was difficult to estimate the cost, although it might be possible in the future.
Coun Campbell added: “There has been a substantial increase over the last few years, particularly of the round-robin type of request sent to all councils.”
Some requests were of a frivolous nature and it could be necessary for the council to look at ways of managing the cost.
The cost of information freedom
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Gary Skentelbery
Experienced journalist for more than 40 years. Managing Director of magazine publishing group with three in-house titles and on-line daily newspaper for Warrington. Experienced writer, photographer, PR consultant and media expert having written for local, regional and national newspapers. Specialties: PR, media, social networking, photographer, networking, advertising, sales, media crisis management. Chair of Warrington Healthwatch Director Warrington Chamber of Commerce Patron Tim Parry Johnathan Ball Foundation for Peace. Trustee Warrington Disability Partnership. Former Chairman of Warrington Town FC.
4 Comments
We are tax payers. If your employer asks you to account for your actions in work or what is going on in a particular aspect of work then you answer the question. you don’t charge him. We are your employers, we already pay for this service through taxes..its our money don’t pretend to be looking to save money on our behalf what you want to do is charge us for something we already own…leaving the only other explination for your view being that there is something to hide and charginge for FOI is just a mechanism to dissuade.
If all information was freely avavilable and not ‘hidden’ away then there would be no need for people to submit FOI requests. Under what circumstances would people be expected to pay ??? That statement in itself makes me ‘wonder’ ?? Maybe it is the cost of photocopying documents etc in which case we may be being a bit unfair in criticising the idea but if that is the reason they could be sent electronically instead for free.
110 people asked questions in the first quater of the year…my god how will you cope with the workload!
I suspect that many of these requests were regarding the Walton Hall scandal.
had this have been chargeable (the maximum used to be £15 althogh I dont know how they can justify this £2 more reasonable for any organisation) so even that would have only generated £1650 at maximum..hardly going to make a dent in the £50milion defecit.
If you want to make a name for yourself, why not point out the legal implication of the term “Freedom of information” when attributed with a “charge” at all, I’m sure its unenforcable since the definition of freedom is without constraint … yet a restraint is implied by a charge.