The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has issued a formal Enforcement Notice to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust, over “long‑standing and systemic failures” to comply with statutory duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
The action follows the Commissioner’s monitoring of FOI performance on the WhatDoTheyKnow platform and a separate section 50 complaint. The Trust was asked in December 2025 to supply performance data, which showed significant delays, severely low compliance rates, and an increasing backlog of unanswered FOI requests.
The ICO found a deterioration in FOI performance. Updated statistics provided by the Trust in February 2026 showed that for quarters two to four, its FOI compliance rate was only 26%, slipping further to 24% in quarter two. At the end of quarter four, the Trust had 95 outstanding requests, including 60 over three months old. Monthly FOI volumes were between 194 and 229 requests.
The Trust attributed its performance issues to several operational pressures, including:
- No substantive FOI officer since September 2024, with recruitment delayed by financial constraints and a planned organisational restructuring.
- Increased volume and complexity of FOI requests.
- Outdated software, not built for FOI case management.
- Loss of experienced staff, reducing the Trust’s ability to collate information.
- Executive approval delays for sensitive requests.
- Limited FOI awareness across departments and competing clinical priorities.
The Trust, however, said that it was committed to issuing high‑quality responses and reported strong performance on subject access requests under data protection law.
While the Commissioner said that he acknowledged the Trust’s efforts and constraints, concluded that enforcement action was both necessary and proportionate, citing the Trust’s continuing non‑compliance with section 1(1) FOIA (duty to inform and communicate information) and section 10(1) (20‑working‑day time limit).
The Enforcement Notice requires the Trust to clear all overdue FOI requests (those beyond 20 working days where a permitted extension has not been used) and to issue either the requested information or a valid refusal notice under section 17. This must be completed within six months.
Separately, within 35 calendar days, the Trust must publish a comprehensive FOI Action Plan, and conduct a “lessons learned” exercise, identifying root causes of delay and specifying mitigation measures for recurring issues.
The ICO also directed the Trust to make use of its FOI self‑assessment tools and template improvement plans.
