LBWF and information requests: a new case shows that despite past official reprimands, Information Officer Mark Hynes’ service is still casually impeding transparency

As this blog has documented, LBWF’s past history of handling information requests is chequered, with some residents finding their inquiries thwarted by delays, illegitimate evasions, and ignorance of the legal framework, to the extent that the Information Commissioner’s Office periodically has had to intervene.

All that is regrettable, but a new case suggests that obfuscation has not just continued, but become bolder.

In October 2022, the Leader, Cllr. Grace Williams, told me that if I kept asking questions about Town Hall asbestos failures, she might invoke the Council’s Unreasonable Behaviour Policy.

Her threat triggered derision in Private Eye, but since my questions actually had been few in number, and always polite, I was interested in what lay behind such a disproportionate, not to say foolish, threat.

After several months of mulling this over, and various interruptions, in early March 2023, I decided that the best way forward was via a Subject Access Request (SAR), and submitted the following, using the recommended format and wording:

‘Please supply the data you hold about me (and referencing me as “Nick Tiratsoo”, “Nicholas Tiratsoo” or “NT”), which I am entitled to receive under data protection law, held in:

e-mails and/or other written correspondence concerning LBWF’s “Policy on dealing with Unreasonable Behaviour” between politicians and senior officers in LBWF and other politicians and senior officers in LBWF from 25 October 2022 to 1 January 2023’.

To this, LBWF reacted in timely fashion, asking me (as was its right) to provide ID, which I did, then issuing me with a reference number (SAR-SA-2022-0140), and finally forwarding the deadline date for an answer, 7 April 2023.

Subsequently, the deadline passed, and by the beginning of June there was still no word.

Hence on 5 June 2023 I wrote LBWF Monitory Officer and Information Officer, Mark Hynes, a chasing e-mail, and this worked, because a few days later, on 9 June, I received a response from one of his colleagues who (she noted) wrote explicitly on Mr. Hynes’ behalf:

‘Request for Information under the Data Protection Act 2018

Reference number: SAR-SA-2022-0140

Thank you for making a Subject Access Request (SAR) to the Council.

I regret that we cannot provide the information you requested. This is because there are no records held in connection to: 

“e-mails and/or other written correspondence concerning LBWF’s ‘Policy on dealing with Unreasonable Behaviour’ between politicians and senior officers in LBWF and other politicians and senior officers in LBWF from 25 October 2022 to 1 January 2023’’’.

This was hardly satisfactory, needless to say. Had Cllr. Williams really not discussed her threat with anyone else? Had she dreamt it up all by herself? Or had those concerned, anticipating public questioning, avoided any written trace?

But what intrigued me most was the fact that it had taken LBWF so long to respond, indeed so long that it had flagrantly broken the mandatory deadlines laid down in the Data Protection Act 2018, a point I made in an e-mail to Mr. Hynes on11 July 2023:

‘Dear. Mr. Hynes,

…The Data Protection Act 2018 [guidance] states under the heading “How long should it take”:

“The organisation must give you a copy of the data they hold about you as soon as possible, and within 1 month at most.

In certain circumstances, for example particularly complex or multiple requests, the organisation can take a further 2 months to provide data. In this case, they must tell you:

·       within 1 month of your request

·       why there’s a delay”

…In short, 

(a) LBWF should have responded to my request of 7 March 2023 by 7 April 2023 but did not;

(b) LBWF at no time requested an extension; 

(c) when LBWF did respond on 9 June, it was only because of my chasing e-mail, and nine weeks after the statutory deadline’.

There followed another long period of silence. 

Then, out of the blue, on 29 August 2023, LBWF sent me notification that I had made an unspecified complaint, which it had given the reference CU542736752.

Mystified, I asked for elucidation, and was told it related to my letter to Mr. Hynes of 11 July 2023.

This in itself was puzzling, since LBWF service standards require that complaints are answered within 20 working days (‘We have 20 working days from the date of receipt of your complaint to investigate and give you a response’).

However, more mystifying still was an e-mail from Mr. Hynes himself which followed on 5 September 2023, for in this he stated without context or proper explanation:

 ‘In your request recorded under reference SAR-SA-2022-0140 you had asked for the following: 

“e-mails and/or other written correspondence concerning LBWF’s ‘Policy on dealing with Unreasonable Behaviour’ between politicians and senior officers in LBWF and other politicians and senior officers in LBWF from 25 October 2022 to 1 January 2023”.

Your request has been logged as a SAR however the subject matter of your request does not relate to your personal records or information about you personally. 

As such, your request has not been determined to be a SAR as would be the case under the Data Protection Act. 

Your request should have been logged as an FOI. You should have been advised of this when you initially submitted your request. The Council apologises for this error’.

As is obvious, Mr. Hynes seems to have forgotten that not only had LBWF accepted my request of 7 March 2023 as a SAR, but his colleague had also actually answered it as a SAR! Nor does he explain why this whole process had become so protracted.

But more seriously, Mr. Hynes also misquotes – and so mispresents – what I had originally asked for, leaving out the key paragraph here coloured red:

‘Subject Access Request

Please supply the data you hold about me (and referencing me as “Nick Tiratsoo”, “Nicholas Tiratsoo” or “NT”), which I am entitled to receive under data protection law, held in:

e-mails and/or other written correspondence concerning LBWF’s “Policy on dealing with Unreasonable Behaviour” between politicians and senior officers in LBWF and other politicians and senior officers in LBWF from 25 October 2022 to 1 January 2023’.

So Mr. Hynes’ assertion that ‘the subject matter of your request does not relate to your personal records or information about you personally’ is the opposite of the truth.

What to say?

LBWF purports that Mr. Hynes is an experienced local government solicitor. Yet here he is, presiding over proceedings where internal and external rules are discarded apparently on a whim, with a concluding comment that is patently ridiculous.

It is hard not to laugh, but there is a serious side, too, because such buffoonery risks bringing LBWF into disrepute, and since it is a public institution, with significant local weight, that must concern us all.