Sussex Police chief confident force will clear backlog of Freedom of Information requests by end of year

Speaking to Police & Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne, Jo Shiner said the force received around 145 FoI requests each month – and the figure was rising.

In March, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued an enforcement notice against the force for ‘continued failings to meet their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act’.

At the time, Warren Seddon, the ICO’s director of freedom of information & transparency, said both Sussex and Yorkshire Police had ‘let people down with their woeful failure to comply with the law on responding to information requests’.

At the time, the backlog for Sussex was 753 requests, including 389 which were more than six months old.

The enforcement notice ordered the force to clear the backlog by the end of August.

The Chief Constable said all but 26 had been dealt with and the rest would be finished by the end of this month.

Aside from the backlog dealt with by the compliance order, a further backlog of 192 requests has built up – but the Chief Constable said there would be no backlog by the end of the year.

Describing how the demand for Freedom of Information requests was increasing, she explained that Sussex Police received 742 – 124 per month – between June and November 2023.

That rose to 871 – 145 per month – over the last six months. An increase of 17%.

She added: “We’re now planning for ever-increasing FoI demands in the future which, sadly, until there is a really good technological solution in terms of maybe AI, we’ll need to look at the resourcing of that.”