Clockwatchers’ Charter: How to Score Your Council’s FOI Record — and Publish It

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is one of the few tools that lets any resident ask a public body a direct question and expect a direct answer. The law gives authorities 20 working days to respond. Not 20 working days if convenient. Not 20 working days after a chase. Twenty working days, full stop. In 2026, that should be routine. For too many councils, it is not.

The response to delay should not be a shrug. It should be measurement. One late request is an annoyance; a pattern of late requests, refusals and internal reviews is a governance problem. The good news is that councils already publish much of the evidence you need to prove it. The better news is that you can add to it with a short, polite request and turn the result into a scorecard that councillors, reporters and campaigners can use.

Why the clock is the story

Section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act sets the 20-working-day limit. If a council needs more time to consider the public interest, it can extend the deadline, but it must tell you and explain why. If it refuses your request, it should cite the exemption and tell you how to challenge the decision. If it ignores you, you can ask for an internal review and then complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

All of that is well known inside town halls. What is less visible is the pattern. A council that answers 70 per cent of requests on time is not simply having a busy quarter. It is running a system that routinely fails the legal standard. A council that uses the vexatious exemption at several times the rate of its neighbours is not necessarily overrun by time-wasters. It may be using the exemption as a door-closing device. A council whose internal reviews overturn a large share of its original decisions has a quality problem, not just a timing problem.

Those are the signals a scorecard should capture. The point is not to create a crude league table for its own sake. The point is to make a pattern visible, comparable and hard to dismiss.

The four numbers that matter

Start with the council’s published FOI statistics for the most recent 12-month period to 31 March 2026. Many authorities publish an annual FOI report or a disclosure log; some publish both. If the statistics are missing, that is itself a finding. Ask for them.

From the published figures, extract four measures:

• On-time rate: the percentage of requests answered within the statutory 20 working days. This is the headline number.
• Full refusal rate: the percentage of requests where information was withheld in full. Refusals can be legitimate, but a high rate alongside slow responses deserves scrutiny.
• Use of section 14: the number of requests refused as vexatious, per 1,000 requests received. Section 14 exists for a reason, but it should not become a routine shortcut.
• Internal review overturn rate: the percentage of internal reviews where the council changed its original decision, in full or in part. A high overturn rate suggests the first decision was often wrong.

If the council does not publish all four, request them. The template below is designed to be sent as it stands.

A request you can send today

Dear FOI Team,

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please provide the following information for the period 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026:

1. The total number of FOI requests received.
2. The number answered within 20 working days, and the number answered late.
3. The number refused in full, and the number where information was partly withheld.
4. The number of requests where section 14 (vexatious requests) was applied, and the number where section 12 (cost limit) was applied.
5. The number of internal reviews requested, the number completed, and the outcome of those completed: upheld, overturned in full, or overturned in part.
6. The median number of working days taken to complete an internal review.
7. A copy of your most recent FOI performance report or statistics return.

Please provide the information in spreadsheet format where possible. If any information is not held, please confirm that and advise where it may be held. I am making a request for information, not a complaint.

Yours faithfully,

[Your name]

How to score the answers

Keep the scoring simple. You are not producing an academic study; you are producing a campaign tool that a councillor can understand in a minute. Score each measure from 0 to 5, then add the four scores for a total out of 20.

• On-time rate: 95 per cent or more, 5 points; 90–94 per cent, 4; 80–89 per cent, 3; 70–79 per cent, 2; below 70 per cent, 1; no usable data, 0.
• Full refusal rate: below 5 per cent, 5; 5–10 per cent, 4; 10–15 per cent, 3; 15–25 per cent, 2; above 25 per cent, 1; no data, 0.
• Section 14 use per 1,000 requests: under 1, 5; 1–3, 4; 3–5, 3; 5–10, 2; above 10, 1; no data, 0.
• Internal review overturn rate: under 5 per cent, 5; 5–15 per cent, 4; 15–30 per cent, 3; 30–50 per cent, 2; above 50 per cent, 1; no data, 0.

Add a short note for each council explaining the context. A small district with a handful of requests can produce a volatile percentage. A large county may have a high raw number of section 14 refusals but a low rate. The note is where you show you have read the figures rather than simply ranked them.

Make the tracker public

A scorecard kept in a drawer changes nothing. We Say Enough is compiling a shared public tracker of council FOI performance. Send your completed scorecard, with links to the source documents and a note of the date you gathered them, to [email protected]. We will publish the scores, remove personal data, and update the record when a council corrects its figures.

Before you submit, do three things. First, check the council’s disclosure log to see whether the information is already published. Second, keep your request focused on aggregate data, not individual cases. Third, record the date you sent your request and the date the response arrived; that is your own evidence of the clock.

What to do when the clock stops

If the deadline passes without a response, send a short chase and then request an internal review. If the review is late or unsatisfactory, complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office. Keep the correspondence. Those dates are the raw material for a question at full council, a scrutiny committee agenda item or a local news story.

The deeper point is political. FOI is not a niche administrative process. It is how residents find out whether a council is telling the truth about its finances, its contracts, its climate claims and its services. A council that cannot answer within 20 working days is a council that is making accountability slower and more expensive for the people it is supposed to serve.

So watch the clock. Count the days. Publish the score. The deadline is not a suggestion, and the pattern is not an accident.