As regular readers of this blog and those who follow me on Twitter will know, I make extensive use of the Freedom of Information laws in the United Kingdom to uncover information about public authorities on a wide range of issues which interest me and have, in my view, a wider public interest.
Most requests that I make will be responded to on or just prior to the 20th working day, which would be the absolute deadline. However last week I received what was probably the quickest response that included full disclosure from a public authority I have ever received.
On Friday 1st July 2011 I wrote to Clackmannanshire Council, a local authority in Central Scotland, seeking information from then in relation to the amounts of council tax that remained outstanding for the last three complete financial years and some information about enforcement. To my surprise (and it was a pleasant one) I received a full response containing all the information I had requested from the council on the 8th July 2011.
Congratulations to Clackmannanshire Council for such a quick response to that request!
In terms of the information sought I will be producing an article on the difficulties faced by individuals in Scotland as a result of Government cuts and this information is likely to feature. However, before I can do that I am awaiting responses from other public authorities to allow me to complete that article.
prout de jure 
Hallelujah! Who would have thought it possible? I’m very impressed with the Council’s performance on this point. On Twitter you usually say that the responses are a long time in coming, or worse – late.
Out of interest, did you manage to successfully obtain information relating to the use/enforcement of Section 38 of the Criminal Justice and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2010? Have our officers actually been using the legislation to good effect?
I was very impressed with the speed of Clackmannanshire Council over this FOI response…it was made by way of a proper letter in the post so in reality a response was provided during the 5th working day!
As for s.38, well that’s the COPFS who are dealing with that one…their FOI deadline for that request is next week.
Yesterday I recieved a response from Central Scotland Police to my request for a review over their failure to respond to an FOI request within 20 working days (request is unrelated to COPFS one above) and they accepted that they failed to comply with Section 10(1) of FOISA.