LBWF Director of Governance and Law Mark Hynes gets knocked back by the Information Commissioner, and is caught out muddling evidence, while council resources drain away

This blog has periodically highlighted the slipshod way that LBWF administers its information services, and the waste of time and public money which often ensues.

In the last couple of years, LBWF Director of Governance and Law, Mark Hynes, who is also Data Protection Officer, together with LBWF CEO, Linzi Roberts-Egan, have each promised reviews and improvements, but as a new case again shows, in reality little has changed.

In February 2024, local commentator, Michelle Edwards, who authors the Anything BUT Countryside & Waltham Forest Council Twitter/X feed, sent LBWF a Freedom of Information Act (FIA) inquiry.

In response, LBWF repeatedly advised that, because her inquiry related to ‘personal data’, it was being treated as a Subject Access Request (SAR) under the Data Protection Act, and added that, to proceed, Ms. Edwards must submit ‘Photographic proof of…identification, such as a passport or driving license’.

Ms. Edwards felt that this latter requirement was manifestly excessive, since she had already submitted ID in relation to a couple of previous SARs, and anyway was a council tenant, so LBWF could easily check her identity.

Nevertheless, LBWF held firm, and when Ms. Edwards asked for a review, on 16 July 2024 Mr. Hynes responded with a five-page letter confirming that, yes, Ms. Edwards’ SAR would only be processed if she completed ‘the necessary identification checks’.

Subsequently, Ms. Edwards complained about LBWF’s stance to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and on 29 July 2024, the latter ruled in her favour:

‘Based on the information provided to us, the ICO concurs that the London Borough of Waltham Forest’s request for ID is inappropriate. When processing a SAR, an organisation should only make requests for information that are reasonable and proportionate. They should not request identity-confirming information if the requester’s identity is obvious to them. In light of your previous engagement with the London Borough of Waltham Forest, it is the ICO’s opinion that your identity should be obvious to them.

In light of this, I have written to the London Borough of Waltham Forest to inform them of the ICO’s opinion on this matter and to request that they provide an appropriate response to your SAR…within 14 days’.

To add insult to injury, Ms. Edwards has discovered that in the course of dealing with her request, Mr. Hynes had made a second and perhaps even more worrying mistake.

When Ms. Edwards asked Mr. Hynes for a review, as noted above, his reply followed standard practice, first reproducing all the previous correspondence between the two parties in date order, and then delivering his decision. 

But as Ms. Edwards examined the correspondence that he cited, she became more and more puzzled.

Mr. Hynes had included what was the first substantive explanation, dated 14 March 2024, of why LBWF intended to treat her FIA inquiry as a SAR.

This was presented as if it was an e-mail to her, but ended with the promise ‘A copy of this response will also be sent by post’. 

The problem was that, after searching through her records, Ms. Edwards could not find anything that matched.

So she challenged LBWF to explain, and it turns out she was quite right to be puzzled, because, as the council’s Information Officer has just admitted, Mr. Hynes had blundered:

‘We would like to offer our sincere apology for the assumption that you had been sent an email and letter dated on the 14th of March 2024. 

An email was uploaded to the case but was not sent… 

We have not been able to find evidence that the letter was posted to you’. 

As is obvious, this case is, to put it mildly, concerning. By stubbornly clinging to a stance that the ICO judges ‘inappropriate’, and muddling evidence, Mr. Hynes not only wasted a considerable amount of Ms. Edwards’ time, but also caused LBWF to engage in a protracted and therefore expensive correspondence which was gratuitous.

It would be nice, in conclusion, to believe that Ms. Edwards’ treatment was an aberration, but unfortunately it fits a by now familiar pattern.

Consider two other recent cases.

At the beginning of the year, LBWF finally answered a FIA request 150 days after it had been submitted, and only because the ICO threatened it with legal action.

And in May, when commenting on Mr. Hynes’ handing of another FIA request, the ICO judged, amongst other things, that it was replete with ‘errors and shortcomings’, and had caused both ‘the Council and the Commissioner…to expend significant time and resources on dealing with a matter that could have been resolved very quickly’ (see links, below).

One pressing question that arises is whether Mr. Hynes fully understands the parameters of his job, not least the importance of upholding the requirements of the relevant legislation, and treating requests for information with due care and attention.

In addition, there needs to be greater clarity about what role Ms. Roberts-Egan and LBWF Leader Cllr. Williams play in the proceedings. Most pertinently, do they know the full extent of Mr. Hynes’ antics, and if so, how have they reacted?

What’s for certain is that, at the moment, residents are left with the worst of all worlds: information services that can’t be trusted to deliver as the law demands, and simultaneously fritter away their hard earned council tax.