The UK ICO has issued its response to the Government's proposals to introduce changes to the FOIA in reducing the number of FOI requests. The ICO is of the view that existing rules would enable the government to achieve its objectives without having to introduce further changes. The main points are:
a more robust application of section 14 (exclusion of vexatious requests) would, to a very significant extent, address the mischief at which the new cost proposals purport to be directed;
• there are grave doubts about the extent to which the aggregation of non-similar requests would be workable in practice, particularly if determined applicants took steps to circumvent the new provisions;
• the proposed concepts of reading, consultation and consideration time, will present very real difficulties for challenge and adjudication;
• the proposals will introduce new layers of procedural and bureaucratic complexity. There is likely - as feared by Frontier Economics - to be “a substantial increase in
requests for internal review and appeals to the ICO, with a substantial increase in costs”.
• there will certainly be a surge of difficult procedural complaints to ICO which can be predicted to start no less than two months after the new Regulations have been implemented. Unless further resources are made available, regrettably, the net effect – at least for the forthcoming year - has to be the prospect of more time taken to resolve difficult cases, an increase rather than a reduction in the backlog of complaints and the diversion of resources onto complaints about costs rather than substantive issues of disclosure of official information in the public interest....
5. The ICO believes that a more robust application of section 14, in line with the published guidance and decision notices, would, to a very significant extent, address the mischief at which the new cost proposals purport to be directed.
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