Westmorland and Furness Council: Strengthening FOI/EIR compliance following a Practice Recommendation
In July 2024, the ICO issued Westmorland and Furness Council with a Practice Recommendation. The recommendation was issued because the Council were responding to a significant proportion of requests outside the statutory timeframe of 20 working days. Following the Practice Recommendation (PR), Westmorland and Furness undertook a comprehensive review of its Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) handling procedures. It served as a catalyst for a series of targeted reforms aimed at improving transparency, responsiveness, and internal coordination.
ICO comment: what this case study means
Intervention from the ICO can help organisations to make necessary changes to the way they handle FOI and EIR requests, improving compliance and providing the public with a more efficient information access experience. Increasing transparency within an organisation – so performance is better understood at a senior level – can improve the organisation’s outwards-facing transparency, through better FOI/EIR compliance and an improved disclosure log.
Improvements in reporting
The council replaced static weekly spreadsheet reports with a live reporting system. This new system provides senior leadership with real-time visibility of open cases, colour-coded by urgency. This enables quicker escalation and resolution of cases. Senior leaders are able to view this reporting system at any time, and the reporting system is a standing agenda item in senior leaders’ weekly meetings.
Information Governance (IG) team members allocate cases to council officers for response, and those officers received automated weekly reminders for outstanding FOI requests, helping them to maintain momentum and accountability.
Internal communication and culture shift
The IG team collaborated with Westmorland and Furness’s operational development team to launch FOI/EIR workshops. These sessions, accessible via the council’s internal learning hub, offered colleagues a structured overview of their obligations and were made available in various formats.
A quarterly newsletter was introduced to raise awareness of FOI/EIR responsibilities, share performance statistics and promote training opportunities.
Team structure and workflow
The IG team’s internal operations were restructured to include daily 20-minute “buzz” meetings focused on urgent cases and deadlines. During the PR recovery period, the Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) held weekly meetings with the IG team, providing a direct escalation route and fostering cross-departmental support. This proactive leadership approach helped identify and address resourcing issues early.
The team was also expanded by two full-time equivalents (FTEs) to build resilience and capacity. This was a staffing increase of 33%, and took the team from 4 to 6 officers. Additionally, the organisation invested in external training, enrolling IG officers in FOI exemption courses.
Transparency
The FOI/EIR disclosure log was overhauled — changing from a downloadable Excel file to a more user-friendly and visually accessible online format. This improved public access to information – and since it happened, Westmorland and Furness have received fewer requests.
And instead of reporting only council-wide compliance percentages in their annual report, Westmorland and Furness now publish compliance data at directorate and service-area levels.
Impact
The reforms yielded significant improvements. By the end of Q4 2024/25, the organisation’s FOI/EIR compliance rate had risen to 93.9%. The ICO’s intervention, by means of a PR, improved morale within the IG team, because it increased the focus on their workload, which in turn ensured they were given the right amount of attention and support.
By the end of Q4, the IG team had increased their corporate communication output, and attended multiple senior leadership meetings. They had implemented comprehensive training plans for new managers responsible for FOI responses in each service, and created an in-house training plan for new starters on the IG team. This work raised the profile of FOI within the organisation, making it everyone’s responsibility, and introducing shared accountability for meeting the requirements of the legislation.