Madam,

I read with interest the letter from Alun Williams of Ceredigion County Council titled ‘Statistics show that majority of FOI requests lead to disclosure’.

I would say the title should have been ‘Statistics show that majority of FOI requests lead to a reply, not disclosure'.

The FOIA states: “Public authorities should reply promptly and in any event not later than the 20th working day following the date of receipt. Authorities should regard the 20 working day limit as a ‘long stop’.”

I have made requests on numerous occasions to eight councils and the Welsh Government over the past two years regarding TrawsCymru bus services.

All these public bodies, including Ceredigion council, always reply, but never reply promptly before the 20-day limit, as the FOIA requires. When you do receive a reply, the answer can be “no information held” even if the subject was discussed the day before because the FOIA states only “recorded” information can be subject to disclosure.

If you are not happy with the reply there is the option to request the public authority to conduct an internal review. This involves another 20 days’ wait, if you are lucky, and the answer is almost always “an accurate reply has been given”.

At this stage, most people give up in sheer frustration, but you can complain to the Information Commissioner who, if your complaint is upheld, will issue a Decision Notice to the public authority. This is definitely worth pursuing as in 50 per cent of cases the public authority is forced into releasing information.

Alun Williams does not quote the statistics that his arguments are based on, but I can quote the Welsh Government statistics for 2016, which are held on their website.

The Welsh Government received 885 requests and replied to them all, but only disclosed information to 559 of the requestors, so that 326 (36.8 per cent) led to no disclosure at all. Of the 559 where disclosure was made an unspecified number involved only part disclosure.

A recent request that I made with 24 questions resulted in disclosure on just two of the 24 questions.

Most of the 885 requestors gave up their attempts to get the information, but 69 requested an internal review. The Welsh Government internal review upheld the requestor’s complaint in four of the 69 cases (5.8 per cent).

At this stage most people gave up but 16 did complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office and a Decision Notice was issued in relation to eight of them (50 per cent) and the Welsh Government was forced to release information.

The difference between the results from the Welsh Government internal review (5.8 per cent) and the Information Commissioner’s results (50 per cent) is staggering.

I would be interested to see Alun Williams provide his statistics to see whether “the majority of Ceredigion council FOI requests led to disclosure”. I suspect that we would find that “the majority of Ceredigion council FOI requests led to a reply”.

Yours etc,

John McTighe, Llanrhystud.

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