Tuesday 8 August 2017

Freedom of Information - the difference a Review can make...


Freedom of Information responses from Carmarthenshire Council can be a mixed bag.
Sometimes they try to baffle you with b******t, (appointment of Monitoring Officer, Linda Rees Jones) and sometimes there are bizarre refusals (top secret transfer of public toilets to community councils).

Occasionally, a few interesting beans are spilled, (the, er, 'car park deal', released whilst the chief executive happened to be confined to his potting shed courtesy of Gloucestershire police) whilst sometimes they're met with hellfire, brimstone, and raging defensiveness (asking for correspondence between County Hall and an evangelical church).

My latest FOI request concerned the Wellness Village thingy at Delta Lakes, Llanelli. More specifically, how much the council has spent on the project so far.

My request was clear and asked for information from 2013 to date. I also asked for the cost of any 'works' to be detailed in the response.

The response duly arrived, scant in detail (a hallmark of the whole project so far) but, aside from the match funding from other partners, the figure for the council itself was £32,597.50.

Unfortunately the information only went back to 2016, not 2013 as I'd requested, and didn't include any of the 'works' such as preparing and raising the site so the whole thing doesn't get washed away. It's not called Delta Lakes for nothing.

Given the omissions I asked the council to review their response, the outcome of which arrived yesterday with a new figure, slightly erm, higher than the first at £564,427.72...

At some point soon the council might even get round to submitting the planning application, which in itself has cost £34,000...

The full thread of the FOI request, and responses, can be seen here. There will be more on the Wellness venture in due course, and I've also asked Welsh Government for some figures, but this is an illustration of how, when a council doesn't routinely publish spending details, and has a culture of defensiveness; scrutiny and monitoring can be problematic.

Whilst I'm on the subject, the Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill is slowly wending its way through parliament and, as the title suggests, hopes to extend the reach of the FOI Act. The Statement of Purpose (in full here) sums up the aims;

'The Freedom of Information (Extension) Bill will seek to make housing associations, local safeguarding children boards, Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers and the Housing Ombudsman public authorities for the purpose of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, whilst making information held by persons contracting with public authorities subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000...'

All very welcome and interestingly it includes Returning Officers. A request I made some years ago concerning fees paid to our Returning Officer/chief executive was considered by Mr James to be an outrageous invasion of his personal space...I might as well have been asking for his bank details and PIN number.

(all previous FOI requests mentioned in this post can be found by searching this blog, they're there somewhere!)

2 comments:

Jac o' the North, said...

At the thought of housing associations being covered by FoI legislation I am rubbing my hands.

Though the mystery remains - why were bodies receiving vast amounts of public funding not covered in the first place?

Anonymous said...


After reading about the Wellness centre on the various partner websites - it seems like it could be the first village development in Wales for Centre Parcs

As for the planned research activities this would be better located in a science park alongside the existing Swansea University campus