ASK us or your local Powys County Councillor before making a costly FOI request, cabinet members have urged.

At the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, July 21 councillors discussed and noted the annual Information Governance report for 2019/20.

The report showed that the number of Freedom of Information (FOI) Environment Information Regulation (EIR) and Subject Access Request (SAR) completed in time, has got worse.

Councillor had been told by data protection officer, Helen Dolman, that each request costs “around £115”.

Portfolio holder for Adult Services, Councillor Myfanwy Alexander (Independent – Banwy), said: “It can’t be stressed often enough that the best way to get information is simply to ask.

“Cabinet member are more than happy to task their officers to provide that information.”

Finance portfolio holder, Councillor Aled Davies (Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant & Llasilin), said: “I do wonder how often people use FOI as the first port of call rather than going to their local councillor or even cabinet members to find out.”

“We try and be a very transparent organisation.”

He wondered if any analysis of this had been done.

Ms Dolman said: “We do record what types of people who make request, we can identify if they are a member of the public, media or from a political party.

“But, we would not know if they come to us as a last resort, or first point of call.”

Cllr Aled Davies: “It would be good to know how many come from the media or political organisations, it’s an easy way for them to do a bit of research, just bung a FOI to all council’s across Wales.”

Information requests are supposed to be dealt with in 20 working days, and the Information Commissioner expects a 90 per cent success rate.

The report explained that problems answering requests in the time frame had been party due to staff leaving and posts left unfilled during 2019/20

Ms Dolman told cabinet that new staff members had been recruited.

One  started earlier this month and the other is due to start at the beginning of August.

Other issues included other parts of the council being slow to respond with the required information.

In total the were 1,295 information requests in all forms were received by PCC in 2019/20 which compares to 1,420 in 2018/19.

FOI compliance rate has dropped by nine per-cent, to 69 per-cent out of 1,095 requests.

EIR compliance rate dropped by 25 per cent, to 58 per cent out of 118 requests.

On Subject Access Requests (SAR) where people ask for data held by the Council on themselves – the compliance rate has dropped by 27 per cent to 29 per cent out of 82 requests.

Complaints about the way information requests were handled, led to 36 internal reviews.

Due to coronavirus 10 cases are still waiting to be investigated.

Of the other 26 complaints, 17 were upheld or partially upheld.

Another seven complaints were made directly to the commissioner.