Six-fold increase in waiting times for FOI appeals in Scotland, commissioner reports

The speed of government transparency probes in Scotland has declined due to Covid and workload pressures, the Scottish Information Commissioner has said.

Daren Fitzhenry, who has been Scotland’s chief transparency champion since October 2017, has said a “significantly higher than usual” caseload for his office alongside Covid pressures has led to delays.

The SIC investigates and rules on whether public bodies including the Scottish Government have abided by freedom of information legislation.

Since the start of the Covid pandemic, Scottish ministers have been found repeatedly to have unlawfully breached transparency rules following investigations by the SIC.

The Scottish Information Commissioner's office is funded by the Scottish Parliament.

Prior to the pandemic, applicants would have seen cases allocated to investigators within a couple of weeks but now are forced to wait around three months.

Cases have also risen by around 30 per cent, Mr Fitzhenry said, with around 625 applications to the commissioner in 2021/22 adding to an existing backlog of cases caused by pandemic pressures.

In a letter to applicants, the commissioner said: “Like many other regulators, we are continuing to deliver our service under challenging circumstances, and a number of factors have arisen which have led to delays as we conduct some areas of our work.

“We are continuing to identify and adopt measures to streamline our investigative process and to process cases more quickly, without impacting the quality of our investigations.

"We are also starting the process to recruit additional resource for the enforcement team.”

The Scottish Information Commissioner has a team of 23 people, a budget of around £2m per year, and is based in St Andrews, Fife.

Ministers have fallen foul of transparency probes undertaken by the commissioner several times in the last year.

The Scottish Government was found to have unlawfully kept Covid-19 death and case modelling secret in January, and were told to release the value of the half a billion pound Lochaber guarantee following an appeal by the Financial Times.

Under FOI legislation, anyone who has made a request for information has the right to appeal to the commissioner for a decision on whether the law has been applied correctly.

Following a decision, an individual or a public body can appeal to the Court of Session on a point of law only for a final decision.

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