Whitby Town Council considers hiring more staff to deal with ‘significant increase’ in Freedom of Information requests

Coun Linda Wild has proposed a motion urging Whitby Town Council to employ an additional member of staff to answer requests submitted under FOI and data protection legislation.

The motion states that the additional part-time staff member is needed because “the council has seen a significant increase in these [requests]”.

The FOI Act allows public access to information held by public authorities by requiring them to publish certain information about their work while members of the public are also entitled to request information.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Coun Wild said: “I am very concerned that the ever-increasing requests will be detrimental to the work that Whitby Town Council is undertaking on behalf of the town.

“This has led me to put forward the motion for an extra staff member to help manage the increased workload.”

According to the law, public authorities should respond to FOI requests within 20 working days but the request can be turned down if it would cost too much or take too much staff time to deal with the request.

However, the councillor said that the town council currently only has one and a half members of staff who handle the requests which she said can take “between four and 18 hours per instance to process,” with a single hour of additional work each week equalling “1.6 per cent of the administrative team’s capacity”.

She added: “To provide the services they do, there isn’t the elbow room to make space for the extra demand.”

The motion, seconded by Coun John Nock, proposes: “That Whitby Town Council employs an additional member of staff for 10 hours per week to answer requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018, since the council has seen a significant increase in these.”

Coun Wild, who is chair of the council’s finance, policy and general purpose committee, estimated that hiring a part-time member of staff would cost the council “in the region of £7,300 at minimum wage, including statutory overheads”.

The motion will be discussed at the full meeting of Whitby Town Council on Tuesday, September 5.