Liverpool City Council appeal ICO decision requiring release of bus lane suspension report

Liverpool City Council appeal ICO decision requiring release of bus lane suspension report Edited 20th April 2016 by John Brace to add in missing closing parenthesis. The author of this piece is the Appellant in two cases before the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). These are John Michael Brace v Information Commissioner & Wirral Metropolitan … Continue reading “Liverpool City Council appeal ICO decision requiring release of bus lane suspension report”

Liverpool City Council appeal ICO decision requiring release of bus lane suspension report

Mayor Joe Anderson speaking at a meeting of Liverpool City Council (8th April 2015) — Mayor Joe Anderson speaking at a meeting of Liverpool City Council

Edited 20th April 2016 by John Brace to add in missing closing parenthesis.

The author of this piece is the Appellant in two cases before the First-Tier Tribunal (Information Rights). These are John Michael Brace v Information Commissioner & Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council (EA/2016/0033) and John Brace v Information Commissioner & Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority (EA/2016/0054).

Liverpool City Council have taken the step of appealing to the First Tier-Tribunal (Information Rights) a decision notice of the regulator ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office). The decision notice required Liverpool City Council to provide the draft report in response to a request. However due to the appeal, the outcome of the appeal will determine whether Liverpool City Council have to release the draft report.

The case is listed as case number EA/2016/0084. The decision notice issued on the 8th March 2016 (FER0601794 (which can be viewed on ICO’s website)) is about an Environmental Information Regulations request for a draft Mott McDonald report to Liverpool City Council about Liverpool’s bus lanes. The title of the report is Liverpool Transport Corridors & Bus Lane Suspension.

Had the decision not been appealed, Liverpool City Council would’ve had to release the draft report before polling day (5th May 2016) in the combined elections for local councillor, Mayor of Liverpool and Police and Crime Commissioner for Merseyside.

Liverpool City Council disagree that the draft report should be released on an alleged claim of commercial confidentiality and an alleged claim of adverse impact on those who supplied information to Mott McDonald. The Information Commissioner’s view is that Liverpool City Council have failed to show that these exceptions are engaged.

The final report can be read on Liverpool City Council’s website.

The suspension of various bus lanes in Liverpool has been unpopular with at least one major bus company who stated at a public meeting that it has affected the punctuality of buses on the affected routes. The representative of the bus company also called for the bus lane suspensions to be reversed.

The decision by the Labour administration on Liverpool City Council to proceed with the suspension of the bus lanes was opposed by the Green Party opposition on Liverpool City Council.

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Tribunal confirms that Wirral Council paid ~£48,000 to Emma Degg connected to confidential compromise agreement

Emma Degg at the Wallasey Constituency Committee Working Group 1st October 2014

In a recent Tribunal judgement involving a freedom of information request made to Wirral Council by Paul Cardin, there has been official confirmation that the ~£48,000 payout by Wirral Council to a former employee was to Emma Degg (referred to in the judgement as X).

Emma Degg was a chief officer at Wirral Council. She was the Head of Neighbourhoods and Engagement on a salary of between £77,697 and £86,330.

It has been revealed in the judgement that before leaving Wirral Council Emma Degg signed a confidential compromise agreement with Wirral Council. This compromise agreement included not revealing the amount she was paid to leave Wirral Council or the date she was paid it.

The FOI request along with Wirral Council’s responses can be read on the whatdotheyknow.com website and ICO decision notice FS50522678 can be found on ICO’s website.

Mr. Cardin’s appeal to the Tribunal was dismissed. The judgement stated that the Article 8 (privacy) rights of Emma Degg was a factor in favour of not disclosing the information.

The Tribunal upheld ICO’s decision notice FS50522678 that the information requested should be withheld on grounds that it constitutes personal information.

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What was the government’s response to the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information report?

ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

I will start this by declaring some interests in the area of freedom of information. I am the appellant in case EA/2016/0033 (which is a case with the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) involving decision notice FS50596346). A further case involving an appeal to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) involving decision notice FER0592270 was put in the post on Monday, but is yet to be received by the Tribunal. There are also numerous ICO decision notices that have been issued about FOI requests I have made.

Yesterday the government published the final report of the Independent Commission on Freedom of Information and there is a ministerial written statement here about it.

Introducing new fees for FOI requests (above those that can be already charged) has been ruled out partly because this would lead to a reduction in FOI requests from the media and others.

The ministerial statement also refers to updated codes of practice published. Interestingly one of the requirements of this new code of practice will be for public authorities with a hundred or more full-time equivalent employees to publish detailed statistics on how they deal with FOI/EIR requests.

I presume this will be something similar to the quarterly reports issued by central government which give a detailed account of how FOI and EIR requests have been dealt with over that timescale.

As the ministerial statement states “The publication of such data not only provides accountability to the public, but allows the Information Commissioner to identify and target poorly performing public authorities more effectively.”

Certainly once the new code of practice is published, a new requirement on local government bodies to publish this detailed information will provide an insight into how FOI/EIR requests are dealt with.

There is also going to be revised guidance on the application of section 14(1) (vexatious or repeated requests). The ministerial statement states that they expect this only to be used in “rare cases” and that “the ‘vexatious’ designation is not an excuse to save public officials embarrassment from poor decisions or inappropriate spending of taxpayers’ money”.

There is also going to be consideration by the government of whether to include a requirement to publish expenses and benefits in kind received by senior public sector executives. It seems FOI requests have been made for these, but turned down on data protection grounds.

As I’m the Appellant in the Tribunal case EA/2016/0033 (which isn’t classed as “active” yet (as “active” in such cases is defined as from the point when a hearing date is set), I can reveal that the only major development in that case is that Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council has been added as a party to the appeal as second respondent (originally the case was just between myself and the Information Commissioner).

I’m still awaiting the Information Commissioner’s response (due by the 17th March 2016) and Wirral Council’s response is due not more than 21 days after they receive the Information Commissioner’s response.

Once the Information Commissioner responds and Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council responds to the Information Commissioner’s response, I have up to 14 days to respond to their responses.

The Tribunal have asked all parties to notify them of any dates they are not available between 6th June 2016 and 29th July 2016, so I presume a hearing date will be set on some day between those two dates.

I’ve also been sent a copy of the practice note on closed material in information rights cases.

I’m sure there are those that could comment better than me about a practice direction that leads to hearings discussing the secret information while one of the parties to the appeal is excluded (secret hearings) and a guide to keeping information secret from one of the parties to the case.

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Government consults on introducing £100 (papers) and £500 (hearing) fees for appeals to ICO decision notices

ICO Information Commissioner’s Office logo

Four days ago the Ministry of Justice started consulting on increasing fees for various civil courts and tribunals. The consultation closes on the 15th September 2015.

This is what one of their consultation documents states:

First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber)
124. The General Regulatory Chamber hears a wide range of appeals on regulatory matters, for example charities, consumer credit, transport and appeals from decisions of the Information Commissioner. We do not currently charge fees for proceedings in this chamber, with the exception of appeals in relation to gambling licences. In these cases, the fee charged is based on the value of the licences that are in dispute. We are not proposing to change the fees for these proceedings.

125. In 2013–14 the estimated cost of the General Regulatory Chamber (including Gambling) was £1.6m. The fee income generated from Gambling proceedings (the only fee charging tribunal within the General Regulatory Chamber) was £11,600.

126. In the remaining jurisdictions within the General Regulatory Chamber, we have proposed one fee for an appeal decision on the papers and one fee for an oral hearing. Our proposal is to charge a fee of £100 to issue proceedings, which would entitle the claimant to a decision based on a review of the papers. The claimant may alternatively elect for an oral hearing, in which case a further fee of £500 would be payable. Based on current volumes, we estimate that this proposal would generate a cost recovery percentage of around 17% after remissions.

127. The fees will also apply to “reference” cases where cases are started in the first-tier Tribunal but have to be referred directly to the Upper Tribunal for a first instance hearing.

Questions
Question 14: Do you agree with the proposed fees for all proceedings in the General Regulatory Chamber: specifically £100 to start proceedings with a determination on the papers; and a further fee of £500 for a hearing? Please give reasons.

Question 15: Are there any proceedings in the General Regulatory Chamber that should be exempt from fees? Please give reasons.

I’d better explain a bit better what the above is about by explaining the process to making a FOI request.

You make a Freedom of Information Act request to a public body and if is turned down (whether in part or in full) you can ask the same public body for an internal review.

If at the internal review there is still information withheld and you feel that they shouldn’t have withheld the information you can appeal the internal review decision to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The Information Commissioner’s Office then look into the matter (which can take months as ICO have a backlog of cases) and issue a decision notice (sometimes even if the public body changes their mind and releases the information requested during this time). You can see an example of a decision notice ICO issued for a request I made to Wirral Council on ICO’s website here.

If either the public body or the person making the FOI request disagree with the decision notice, they have 28 days to appeal the decision to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) which is part of the General Regulatory Chamber.

Appeals can then be made of decisions of the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) on a point of law only to the Upper Tribunal.

The consultation is proposing that if someone (whether the public body or the person making the request) wishes to challenge an ICO decision notice by appealing it to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) that there will be a charge of £100 if the decision is made on the papers and £500 if a hearing is required.

The Panopticon blog has also written about this consultation (far more eloquently and in a more entertaining way than I could manage) in a piece headlined Circle the Wagons: They are Coming for the Information Tribunal.

So what do readers think about this proposed change? Most of the appeals to ICO decision notices to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) are by litigants in person, who unless they fall into one of the categories of people who don’t have to pay fees a fee of £100 or £500 may make them think twice before appealing a decision.

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EXCLUSIVE: 155 invoices paid by Wirral Council in 2013/14 for legal services, external audit, physiotherapy and psychological assessments

Below are 155 of the invoices I requested during the 2013/14 audit. They range from invoices to the Council’s external auditor Grant Thornton UK LLP, criminal work, a couple of judicial reviews, appealing an ICO decision notice to the First Tier Tribunal (Information Rights) as well as a lot of times Wirral Council have taken parents to court about their children. Some of these invoices I’ve previously written about on this blog, such as about the invoice about appealing the ICO decision notice. Turns out now I look at it more carefully there was a further invoice for £1,008 from February 2014 in that matter too.

Some of the others I’ve already on the blog as I received them in August 2014. However I didn’t publish them in August because I’ve had to go through a process of blacking out all the names (and partial names) of children and parents.

Added in green to many invoices are the representative (where known) from the list of payments in 2013/14 greater than £500. I’ve also added back in (on some) text which has been obscured by information blacked out on double-sided pages and bled through.

There is an index to all 155 invoices that can be downloaded here. I’ve tried to use the following file format when naming each file “Wirral Council invoice” followed by representative/organisation, amount, date, page number where there are multiple pages for the same invoice followed by invoice number.

Invoices 73 & 74 aren’t published here as they were cancelled and replaced by invoices 75 & 76. There is another batch of invoices I have yet to scan in, which is a mix of invoices for legal services and other general invoices. Below you should find all 155 invoices.