The overall picture of freedom of information compliance of mid-sized local authorities in the North West of England is strong, the Information Commissioner’s Office has found, with internal review rates reasonably low and few complaints having to be escalated to the ICO.
However, the regulator has issued an enforcement notice to Cumberland Council for its failure to act on a previously issued practice recommendation to improve its FOI response times.
The ICO’s comments came after it conducted a “deep dive” into this part of the local government sector aimed at seeing how district and borough councils are coping with rising demands and increasing complexity of information requests.
The research – involving FOI compliance data from 26 borough councils across the North West, with eight taking part in further insight interviews – found that frontline staff dealing with FOIs are “working hard and despite ongoing pressures, they are often doing well but on average compliance levels are lower than they should be”.
The regulator revealed that only 0.6% of requests resulted in a complaint to the ICO, and some authorities were achieving performance as high as 100% for some quarters.
However, on average across those surveyed, almost 1 in 5 responses (17%) are missing the statutory deadline.
The ICO noted that more than half of the authorities contacted already publish, or plan to publish information about their performance.
However, some do not and practice recommendations have been issued to Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council and Halton Borough Council over their failure to publish compliance statistics “as required of a public authority of its size”.
In both cases the Commissioner reached the view that the council’s practices do not conform to part 8.5 of the section 45 Freedom of Information Code of Practice, issued by the Cabinet Office in July 2018.
The ICO research meanwhile found that the most common reasons for withholding information were due to the information being personal data of other people, it was already reasonably accessible to the public, it related to law enforcement, it was commercially sensitive or it was provided to the organisation in confidence.
Explaining the focus on mid-sized authorities, the ICO said: “District and borough councils are often the first place residents turn to when making an information request about their local area. Analysing their performance is important in understanding what the public want to know, and how these authorities can serve them better.”
It added: “Overall, while there are some positive examples of good performance, there remains more to do across the sector. So it remains important that local authorities continue to review their processes to ensure they are following best practice.”
The research highlighted several common themes that the ICO said all organisations should adopt to strengthen their capabilities and stay ahead of emerging challenges:
- Communication is key: be open to reduce complaints
- Be prepared: build resilience and plan for disruption
- Write it down: keep consistent records of decisions
- It’s not optional: make FOI training mandatory
- Knowledge is power: build strong teams
- Speak up: maintain strong senior leadership support
- Be transparent: proactive publication is the way forward
- To exempt or not to exempt: use exemption powers confidently but carefully
- What’s ours is yours: make better use of existing ICO resources
- Finally, celebrate the positives: complaint rates are low
Further information on these and the ICO’s tips can be found here.
Justifying the issue of an enforcement notice to Cumberland Council, the ICO said: “Figures provided by the council to the Commissioner in January 2026 show that, for requests received up to 15 December 2025, it currently has a backlog of 116 overdue requests.
“Of particular concern to the Commissioner is that this includes some severely delayed requests that remain uncleared several months on from the issuing of the practice recommendation.
“In terms of overall timeliness rate, for the most recent period reported at the time of writing – the first half of December 2025 – the Council had complied with 78% of requests within the statutory timescale. This is only a minimal improvement from the rate of 75.5% cited in the practice recommendation.”
