Councils covering much of North East England have been formally criticised for failing to publish basic information about their Freedom of Information performance.
Eight North East councils have received formal practice recommendations from the Information Commissioner after failing to publish statistics showing how they handle Freedom of Information requests.
The authorities are Northumberland County Council, Durham County Council, Newcastle City Council, South Tyneside Council, Sunderland City Council, Hartlepool Borough Council, Middlesbrough Council and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council.
The councils stretch from Northumberland through Tyneside, Wearside and County Durham to Teesside. Seeing eight authorities from one region receiving the same regulatory criticism at the same time presents an embarrassing picture of how seriously proactive transparency is being treated in the North East.
A regional failure to publish basic information
The ICO assessed a sample of local authorities in June 2026 to establish whether they were publishing statistics about their handling of information requests. Each of the eight North East councils confirmed that it was not proactively publishing the required performance information.
The Commissioner concluded that their practices failed to conform to parts 8.5 and 8.6 of the section 45 Freedom of Information Code of Practice.
Authorities with more than 100 full-time equivalent employees are expected to publish details of their FOI performance. The Code says the figures should be updated quarterly and should include the number of requests received, whether statutory deadlines were met, how many requests resulted in information being granted or withheld, and the number of internal reviews.
The ICO’s more detailed reporting guidance provides templates covering open requests, permitted extensions, late responses and the age of any outstanding backlog.
These are large councils with substantial public responsibilities. Publishing a quarterly table showing how many FOI requests they receive and how long they take to answer should be a routine part of reporting their performance.
Their collective failure lets the region down because residents cannot judge whether requests are being answered promptly, whether delays are getting worse or whether old cases are accumulating. The absence of published statistics also makes comparisons between neighbouring councils unnecessarily difficult.
Publication is part of accountability
FOI performance figures serve a practical purpose. They allow councillors, journalists, campaigners and residents to identify problems before a backlog becomes entrenched.
A council reporting a declining compliance rate can be pressed to explain the cause, whether it involves staffing, poor allocation of requests, slow departmental searches or excessive clearance procedures. Where no figures are published, problems may only become visible through individual complaints or later intervention by the ICO.
Each public authority already has a statutory duty under section 19 of the Freedom of Information Act to maintain an approved publication scheme. The ICO’s publication-scheme guidance says authorities should routinely make information including policies, meeting minutes, reports and financial records available.
Quarterly compliance statistics add information about whether the authority’s own transparency system is working. A council may publish budgets and committee papers while still leaving individual information requests unanswered for months. Performance figures allow the public to see both parts of the picture.
The formal finding in these eight recommendations is confined to publication. The ICO made no finding in them about each council’s response rate or the size of any backlog. That limitation makes publication more urgent, because the missing figures are precisely what would allow the public to assess performance.
A recommendation can lead to stronger action
A practice recommendation under section 48 records a failure to follow the FOI Code of Practice. It carries no direct enforcement mechanism. Continued failure can contribute to later enforcement action or an adverse comment in a report to Parliament.
The eight councils have been told to make their performance statistics easily accessible, update them quarterly and write to the Commissioner within one month explaining what they have done.
Recent action elsewhere shows how the ICO responds when poor FOI administration develops into persistent breaches of the Act. King’s College London, Northamptonshire Police, Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service and Derby City Council have all received legally binding enforcement notices requiring them to publish improvement plans and clear overdue requests.
Northamptonshire Police reported an average compliance rate of 52.86 per cent during 2025/26 and hundreds of overdue cases. Derby City Council said only 29 per cent of requests due between January and July 2026 had been answered on time, while some outstanding requests dated back to 2022. King’s College London recorded a compliance rate of 21 per cent during the final quarter of 2025/26.
Those enforcement cases concern much more serious and documented failures than the North East practice recommendations. They also demonstrate why publishing performance information early is useful. Falling compliance rates and ageing requests provide warnings that an authority’s systems are struggling.
The councils should publish their figures now
The eight North East councils have received the same recommendation because they failed the same basic transparency test. They should now publish current and historical quarterly figures in a clear, accessible part of their websites.
The data should show how many requests were received, how many were answered within 20 working days, how many remain overdue and how old the outstanding cases are. Internal-review volumes and outcomes should also be included so residents can see how often the original handling of a request is challenged or changed.
Councils frequently speak about openness, public confidence and accountable local government. In this case, eight of them failed to publish the figures that would allow people to test those claims against their actual performance. Their response to the ICO should be visible in updated public records rather than confined to correspondence with the regulator.
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