What were the 9 most viewed stories on this blog over the last week? It’s time again to look back at the 9 most viewed stories of the last week (with a few comments on each of them). 1. 5 different versions of one political cover up but which one will you choose? The … Continue reading “What were the 9 most viewed stories on this blog over the last week?”
What were the 9 most viewed stories on this blog over the last week?
As nearly half of the stories this week are about freedom of information requests the logo above is of ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) who are the regulator
It’s time again to look back at the 9 most viewed stories of the last week (with a few comments on each of them).
Wirral Council is forced to go back to the drawing board on plans to lease the Conway Building and Hamilton Building in Birkenhead as Isle of Man based International Centre for Technology Ltd pulls the plug on the project.
Continuing a theme running through a number of these stories about freedom of information requests, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service’s Deputy Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan gives his view on freedom of information.
Deputy Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan tells councillors “90 working days” are lost each year in responding to FOI requests
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Councillors on the Performance and Scrutiny Committee (Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority) discuss Freedom of Information requests (starts at 15m 35s) (12th January 2016)
Phil Garrigan (Deputy Chief Fire Officer) speaks about freedom of information requests to a meeting of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s Performance and Scrutiny Committee (12th January 2015)
Although I am not referred to by name (but my profession is in the report), I have made Freedom of Information requests to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service/Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority during the period covered by that report. An appeal of a refusal of one of those Freedom of Information requests to the Information Commissioner’s Office is referred to in the report in section 16. I am therefore declaring this as an interest at the start of this piece.
The report was introduced by Deputy Chief Fire Officer Phil Garrigan, who said “Thanks Chair, again this report relates to our response to a request from Members to better understand the implications of the Freedom of Information requests on the Authority and the report proposes to, it requests that Members review the information in relation to Freedom of Information requests and particularly the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
What I would say from the outset is that Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority adheres to and is supportive of the Freedom of Information Act and values its role in allowing people to access information, giving them the right to find out about matters and decisions that affect them. I’d like to be absolutely crystal clear around that.
However, use of the Act is becoming increasingly popular and the volumes of freedom of information requests have increased over the recent years. The table on page 58 exemplifies that. We received, we saw freedom of information requests in 2011 at 72, 2014 at 138 and up until November 9th 2015 at 131.
So it’s clear evidence that the freedom of information requests coming through to Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority has increased significantly over that period and you know Members will also be aware that we’ve been receiving those freedom of information requests it’s a requirement on us to turn around that information within twenty days unless we are able to provide you know a legitimate reason as to why we wouldn’t provide that information and even then we’d have to evidence that and reply to the particular individual who’s requested the information.
What we also recognise is that there are different courses of action that we could take. You know a) providing the information, redacting the information, refusing to supply the information by applying an exemption or determining that the work required to pull the information together is disproportionate and then notifying the application that it’s available by other means or by determining the request is vexatious and certainly the Information Commissioner has said you know when challenged around freedom of information and the number of requests it is always available for an authority or an organisation to reject it on the basis that it’s a vexatious request, but equally Members will appreciate the fact that that is quite challenging in that regard because it seems very protectionist, it seems as though we would be withholding information from a public member or an organisation on that basis and it’s very difficult to legitimise that in my view and more often than not the individuals, the staff who are seeking to provide that information will go way beyond what’s expected to provide that information as accurately as they are able to.
But it does place demands on our organisation, particularly as our organisation continues to reduce in size and when we look at the, our attempts to protect our front line operational response and we look at, it’s incumbent on us that we look at the support services that maintain the Service outside of our operational firefighters. So our non uniformed colleagues and uniformed colleagues are spending a significant amount of time dealing with freedom of information requests. So the organisation is shrinking but the demand around freedom of information is increasing.
So what the report does is it recognises that fact, it appreciates the fact that you know we will get a multitude of different requests in, some from you know members of the public, but some extended to journalists and so on and so forth and representative bodies who are utilising the information not in my view for how it was necessarily meant to be utilised in the first instance and also we have requests coming from organisations and companies where they are seeking to achieve you know some competitive advantage and I’m not sure again that was the basis of what the Freedom of Information Act was all about, but drawing all that in then and you know certainly it’s already been recognised as there’s been an independent Commission that has been invoked to review the Freedom of Information Act and we have provided a response to that saying that we are certainly for legitimate and less vexatious requests and maybe a levy or a charge may be applicable to kind of ensure that they are genuine and not repeated and that would maybe prevent some of the prolific you know press requirements being met when such a charge is applicable.
However the Information Commissioner has published a response in relation to that consultation which says, which argues against the introduction of fees and as I say you know starts to suggest that authorities should use section 14 which is around vexatious requests to avoid responding to the ones that were deemed to be you know vexatious in their very nature.
However you know in regards to that as I’ve previously stated, paragraph 12 describes the challenges around describing something as vexatious and that’s not something we would want to be perceived to be defensive over the policies and procedures that we’ve adopted as an Authority. I’m not sure we would want to be, or I certainly know we would want to be as transparent and open as possible but nevertheless what does that mean in reality?
In reality it means that since July 2015 through November, 32 complete requests have been responded to and the total of hours that have been attributed to that to deal with those requests 153 hours, which equates to 4.8 hours per a request for information. When you extrapolate that over the twelve month period it equates to 629 hours which again would be in effect is about 90 days of a person who is being responded to and obviously that’s a collective person because that’s an hour of one department, two hours of another, three hours of another and so on and so forth, but in totality it’s about 90 working days that’s lost from this Authority in responding to freedom of information requests at a time when we would be better focussed on our attentions on the delivery of the service and as I say protecting the front line.
However that is the kind of realities and again this is not about us, you know, challenging the utilisation of freedom of information but certainly it questions its actual usage in its broader sense and who actually uses it for what reasons.
When you then as part and parcel of our response to the consultation we asked staff members about what they felt the implications were for themselves and they are detailed in paragraph 19.
But what I would say in kind of closing and given that the kind of clarity of 90 working days lost to responding to freedom of information requests, I’ll just bring you back to the legal implications. Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority has a duty under the Freedom of Information Act to deal with requests promptly and in the event no later than 20 working days after receipt of the requests.
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority can exercise its rights under the Act if an exemption has been correctly applied and in most cases the public interest test is then applied to ensure any exemptions are correctly applied under those circumstances.
So there are ways in which we can deal with them, but again just to reiterate the point, our intent is to be as open and transparent as possible. We are you know responding to each and every one and it does incur a significant cost associated with them of 90 days across the whole 12 months of the organisation irrespective of who necessarily deals with them but certainly there are members of certain teams who spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with requests. I’m happy to take any questions on that Chair.”
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What were the 9 most viewed stories on this blog over the last week?
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson on a train
There are many stories I plan to publish on this blog soon. There’s one involving Hoylake Golf Resort, a story involving a cover-up at Wirral Council sanctioned by a Conservative Minister and of course the steady stream of news that is local politics. I also plan to look back at what were the most viewed news stories in 2015.
However it’s time to look back at the 9 most viewed stories of the last week (with a few comments on each of them).
This is a look at what Merseytravel spend on media monitoring (which covers not just this blog, but newspapers and broadcast media too). It formed part of my citizen audit over the summer (but with tales of councillors’ salmon dinners and stays at gentleman’s clubs by Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority councillors) only was published now.
The big news story of the week was about whether the Mersey Ferries had a future at Woodside. Councillors disagreed with the consultants and asked for an option that kept the three terminals (Woodside, Seacombe and Liverpool Pier Head).
Inspired by the Sherlock Christmas special, this went back in time to 1894 to a fictional conversation around the Brace breakfast table. Yes Wirral is still in Cheshire, blogs don’t yet exist and the first Mersey Tunnel for the railway has recently been opened.
Number five leads in to Liverpool City Council’s views on Freedom of Information. They suggest a series of radical moves. They want the 18 hour rule changed to 6 or 7 hours, for those making Freedom of Information requests to be charged for the time it takes Liverpool City Council to black out information, more opportunity to deem requests vexatious and to abolish internal reviews.
What was in Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority’s 2 page response to the FOI consultation?
ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo
Next is the response to the FOI consultation from the Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority.
Again I’ll declare an interest as I’m alluded to in their response (in fact my profession is named) and my appeal to the Information Commissioners Office last year is explicitly referred to in a report going to councillors next week.
Now by their own figures, responding to all the FOI requests over the whole of last year (2015) used up the equivalent of ~0.375 of a full-time employee.
From what I remember, this means that they allocate more resources to their press office than FOI.
Staff wide Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service had last year an estimated 700 firefighters and I’d estimate 300 staff that aren’t firefighters (of course this is directly employed staff, not staff employed by contractors).
So 0.0375% of its staff budget (approx) is spent on answering FOI requests, the equivalent of around a third of a job of a full-time employee.
Below is the MFRA [Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority] response to the FOI consultation, which you can compare to Liverpool City Council’s response.
Although it states it’s from the MFRA [Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority] by the way it’s written “The Service considers” one assumes that as with LCC’s response it’s been drafted by officers. Unlike the attitude taken by Liverpool City Council Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service state they are "supportive of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act".
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority
Freedom of Information Call for Evidence
Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (MFRA) would like to make the following comments in relation to questions 3 and 6 of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information Call for Evidence:
Question 3:What protection should there be for information which involves candid assessment of risk? For how long does such information remain sensitive?
The Service considers that there should be some protection for public authorities in relation to the release of risk registers. High level information about risks and mitigation is appropriate for release and many authorities will publish this as a matter of course. When a request is made for detailed risk registers relating to on-going projects or activities, this is much more difficult for this Service to deal with. It is vital when ensuring that public services are being delivered effectively, that all risk are considered and that staff feel able to “think the unthinkable”. Often these risks are mitigated, but they still remain in risk registers and are open to misinterpretation or being sensationalised. The Service would request that consideration be given to risk registers of this type only being release after the project is completed.
Equally releasing risk mitigation measures prior to the completion of the project may compromise the
measures themselves exposing services to additional risk.
Question 6: Is the burden imposed on public authorities under the Act justified by the public interest in the public’s right to know? Or are controls needed to reduce the burden of FoI on public authorities? If controls are justified, should these be targeted at the kinds of requests which impose a disproportionate burden on public authorities? What kinds of requests do impose a disproportionate burden?
The Service is supportive of the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, and values its role in allowing people access to information and giving them the right to find out about matters and decisions that affect them. However, use of the Act has become increasingly popular and the volume of FoI requests has increased over the years. For example, the table below shows the increase in requests to MFRS since 2011:
Year
FoI Requests received
FoI requests believed to be for commercial purposes (as far as can be established with the information available)
2011
72
Not recorded
2012
82
Not recorded
2013
101
Not recorded
2014
138
13
2015
131
17
Dealing with this increase in requests has had an impact on the Service which for Merseyside Fire Authority undoubtedly places increased pressure on relatively small teams. Over the last four years, the Fire and Rescue Authority has had to make savings of £20 million as a result of Government spending cuts. The Authority is required to make a further £6.3 million savings in 2015/16. It is also clear that the Authority will also face further significant cuts over the course of the next Parliament. The Authority has already made significant reductions in its support services and staffing, which means there are fewer staff available to service FoI requests. To save £6.3 million in 2015/16, the Authority has identified another £2.9 million to be cut from support services, further reducing capacity.
Whilst the Service respects the rights of citizens to ask for information that may affect their lives and communities and recognises the role that journalists may play in seeking out inefficiencies or poor practices in the public sector, there is a cost associated with that. The staff collecting, collating, checking, redacting and authorising release of the requested information all have other work to do. As a result, dealing with a FoI request is likely to take staff away from core business.
What the Service believes is particularly difficult to justify is the extent to which commercial organisations use FoI to request information to develop new business leads or seek a commercial advantage. The private sector is effectively using the diminishing resources of the public sector for free, when those resources could be put to better use and there is no return on that investment for the public sector.
What we would ask the Commission to consider is either, levying a charge for such requests, or the ability for an organisation to refuse the request where the applicant is not able to demonstrate that the request is in the public interest.
Even when requests could be considered to be in the public interest, for example in relation to a public consultation on the Service’s plans, the enthusiasm of some members of the public to seek more and more detailed information can place significant pressure on a small authority. Five requests from one person for similar but subtly different complex information in the space of one or two months does result in disproportionate effort. This is despite the fact that individually, the cost of meeting the requests would not be sufficient to justify refusal and the subtle differences between requests rule out treating them as vexatious. It is the cumulative effect that has the impact.
It is also difficult to treat requests as vexatious or indeed classify the work required as excessive without it being perceived by the requestor or indeed the public or press as defensive – so in effect services provide the information for fear of being perceived as less than transparent.
Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service has been recording the time spent by all officers involved in processing all FoI requests since July 2015 (32 completed requests). Given it was already keen to understand and share the impact of such requests with the Authority and Government departments.
As such the total time spent since recording began has totalled 153 hours spread across a range of staff from administrators to the Chief Fire Officer. This equates to an average of 4.8 hours per request. If this was applied to the total number of requests received so far this year it would total 629 hours or 90 working days. With the lost time costs in the thousands.
This is resource that can be ill afforded during these times of austerity, so it is vital that the FoI requests processed are of valid public interest and not to further the profits of a commercial organisation.
The Service has welcomed the opportunity to contribute to this call for evidence and looks forward to the publication of the outcomes.
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What were the top 10 most viewed videos on this blog’s Youtube channel in 2015?
Cllr Phil Davies at a Cabinet meeting (which makes the list at number 10)
I never expected when I was young, I would end up running a TV channel (albeit only a Youtube channel). So it’s time for a new feature on this blog looking back at the most viewed videos of 2015.
Hopefully in 2016 I will record even better videos than the ones so far. This list is not based on views but watch time (that is how many hours each video has been viewed). I’ll leave a brief comment below as to what each video is about and why it became popular.
1. Liverpool City Council Budget Meeting 4th March 2015 Part 1
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The annual budget meeting of local councils are known for being the time at which each political party sets what it would do if they were in charge after the elections. This video isn’t popular really for those reasons though.
A councillor called Jake Morrison took exception to a cut to a domestic violence grant to a local charity. The meeting had to be adjourned for a short while. This was because neither the Lord Mayor of Liverpool Cllr Erica Kemp nor Mayor Joe Anderson appeared to know how to deal with this sort of sustained objection by a councillor (other than to adjourn the meeting).
The dramatic scenes are towards the end of this clip, which ends when the meeting was adjourned. Words were had behind the scenes during the adjournment.
2. Liverpool City Council 8th April 2015 Part 1 Mayor Joe Anderson responds to green space protestors
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3. Liverpool City Council public meeting 11th November 2015 Part 2 of 6
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Another more recent meeting of Liverpool City Council also makes the top ten list. This time it was a notice of motion (the earlier few minutes of the notice of motion can be viewed in part 1) about another green space issue (which was to do with Liverpool City Council plans for Beechley Stables, Calder Kids and the Miniature Railway). This was the most well attended meeting of Liverpool City Council I’ve seen by members of the public.
4. Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service consultation meeting Saughall Massie 20th April 2015 Part 1 of 4
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To more local political issues than those across the River Mersey, again just before the 2015 elections, Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service held a very heated public consultation meeting in Saughall Massie. Hundreds of people turned up to the meeting but couldn’t get in, which may in part explain the high viewing figures on this video.
5. Liverpool City Council 16th September 2015 Part 1 of 6
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Indeed on this topic, as recently as the 22nd December 2015, Mayor Anderson (who had just been made Chair of the Combined Authority) refused to answer a question on this topic asked by a member of the public at a public meeting of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.
6. Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee 23rd November 2015
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Finally in 6th place is the first Wirral Council meeting, normally the Standards and Constitutional Oversight Committee attracts little interest, however the facial expressions of its chair during this meeting attracted many comments and more views of the video of the meeting.
7. Liverpool City Council Budget Meeting 4th March 2015 Part 2
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Liverpool City Council makes its final entry in the top ten list, with what happened at the Budget meeting after the adjournment (for what happened before the adjournment see the video at number one).
8. Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service consultation meeting Saughall Massie 20th April 2015 Part 2 of 4
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This is part 2 of the public consultation meeting of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service held in Saughall Massie on a proposed fire station in Saughall Massie (part 1 makes this list at number 4).
9. Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service consultation meeting Saughall Massie 20th April 2015 Part 3 of 4
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Part 3 of the public consultation meeting of Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service held in Saughall Massie on a proposed fire station in Saughall Massie (part 1 makes this list at number 4 and part 2 at number 8).
10. Cabinet Wirral Council 12th March 2015
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Finally, a Wirral Council Cabinet meeting makes the last in this list. In an unusual change of venue it was held at Birkenhead Town Hall.
I can’t remember (nine months later) anything particular that was controversial discussed at this meeting a few weeks before the May elections. The only high-profile issues discussed and decided at this meeting were the "Master Plan Principles" for Birkenhead Town Centre, the outcome of consultation about Pensby High Schools and the nomination for Civic Mayor/Deputy Civic Mayor.
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