The council has again failed to respond to a quarter of freedom of information (FOI) requests, despite committing to improve this.

An FOI request by Reading resident Jason Collie found Reading Borough Council (RBC) received 1,451 FOIs in 2018/19 and did not respond in full to 380, or 26 per cent, in time.

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Mr Collie submitted another FOI this year and found that, in 2019/20, the council received 1,330 requests and failed to respond to 335 on time, or 25 per cent, an improvement of just one per cent.

He slammed the council, saying: “They said it had got better. They have not improved. Only five or six were due to the Covid pandemic.

“In 12 months, they have not improved the FOI performance. They still break the law 25 per cent of the time. The council cannot break the law.”

But the council says this does not take Covid into account fully.

RBC received 1,451 FOIs in 2018/19 and did not respond in full to 380, or 26 per cent, within 20 working days.

In 2019/20, the council received 1,330 requests and failed to respond to 335 on time – 25 per cent failed compared to 26 per cent the year before.

Response rates went from 30 per cent not meeting the deadline in quarter 1, to 18 per cent in quarter 2 and 16 per cent in quarter 3, but then worsened to 39 per cent in quarter 4.

RBC said the overall failure rate of 25 per cent for the whole year does not take the context of the Covid-19 emergency into account, with the drop in the fourth quarter of 2019/20 “likely to be attributable to officers prioritising the urgent response to the Covid-19 emergency”.

The council added: "It was a critical time for Reading and its residents and only right that the emergency response should be prioritised above all else at that time."

In the FOI response, it said only five of the deadlines missed were because it stopped handling FOI requests during the height of the pandemic, but has clarified that additional FOIS were missed before that which may also have been attributable to Covid related work pressures.

The council says the first and second quarter of 2020/21 will also be impacted by Covid but admitted “there remains room for improvement even without the context of the emergency Covid response”.

Legally, FOIs should be responded to within 20 working days.

At an Audit and Governance committee meeting in September 2019, the council said its response rates had started to improve, with 13 per cent of FOIs not responded to on time in the previous three months, but this improvement has not lasted the full year.

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A council spokesman said: "Following internal review, and a subsequent Audit and Governance report in September 2019,  a number of recommendations for improvement were agreed, ranging from training, better reporting, through to improving systems and processes.

"A follow up report in July 2020 showed many of those improvements were implemented and already working well.

“The introduction of a case management system to manage, regularly monitor and report back on FOI  requests is likely to be fully operational shortly and will include a ‘live reporting’ function which will enable the organisation to monitor response rates more closely.

"The new module will also allow for the publication of FOI responses once it is live.”

What are FOIs?

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) first came into effect in 2005.

It is often used by campaigners and journalists but anyone is allowed to request information.

You can request any sort of information from any public body, such as the council, police, or fire service.

Although there are some exemptions, public bodies are legally obliged to give you the requested information.

You can send a FOI request to RBC by emailing: FOI@reading.gov.uk