Manchester's finest drowning in paperwork as Freedom of Information requests pile up

2023-12-20 10:28

Greater Manchester Police must clear the backlog of hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests - some years old - or find itself in contempt of court.

The cop shop has 850 FOI requests to process, including upwards of 800 that are over six months old, 580 made more than 12 months ago, and the oldest submitted over two-and-a-half years ago.

Under the FOI Act, public authorities are allowed to take up to 20 working days to file a response to a request, according to the ICO's regulations.

"In issuing this enforcement notice today, we are demanding urgent action from Greater Manchester Police in responding to Freedom of Information requests," said Phillip Angel, head of FOI casework at the ICO. He said GMP had "Done little" to help overcome the response backlog and the force needs to improve response times to FOI requests, as well as clear the backlog.

"Transparency is key, and compliance of Freedom of Information requests is a vital part of that."

So ends a busy year of interactions between British police and the ICO. In August, an FOI blunder in Northern Ireland exposed a spreadsheet containing details of every serving officer in the country, Cumbria Police also unwittingly disclosed officers' personal information, then Norfolk and Suffolk constabularies made an error when posting raw crime data as part of an FOI request.

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