North Lanarkshire Update

Here's another extract from the Scottish Information Commissioner's decision in relation to North Lanarkshire Council which accused me of submitting 'vexatious' FoI requests.

Now thankfully SIC threw out the Council's case which shows the importance of having an independent referee in these situations, but I laughed my head off while reading the section of the judgement where North Lanarkshire complains that I have been harassing its chief officials.

I remember many years ago watching a TV programme 'Troubleshooter' featuring a flamboyant captain of industry, Sir John Harvey-Jones, who visited struggling businesses and offered his insight and help in turning things around.

At one company Sir John visited, its headquarters were deserted like the Marie Celeste at 5 minutes past five and when he inquired why? Sir John was told, by the owner, that there were all kinds of problems with staff stress.

To which Sir John responded, barely able to contain his high-pitched laugh, that given the state of the business some of its staff could do with a 'good deal more stress'. 

And that's exactly the way I feel about North Lanarkshire Council because if I've been harassing them over the years with my FoI requests and equal pay campaigning, then they could have done with even more scrutiny into their behaviour.

Because that way they might have avoided making such a dog's dinner of equal pay over the past 10 or 12 years. 

The Council’s submissions

13. In its initial response to Mr Irvine, the Council informed him that it considered his information requests to be vexatious:
    
    
    • It believed the main purpose of the requests was to pursue an argument with the Council, rather than to obtain recorded information. In this regard, the Council referred to the substantial amount of information that it had already provided to Mr Irvine in response to previous requests on matters of equal pay and the remuneration of senior Council officials.
      
      
    • Considering the volume and frequency of Mr Irvine’s requests, the Council concluded that responding to them was imposing a significant burden on its resources.
      
      
    • Referring again to the volume and frequency of the requests, the Council concluded that they were having a harassing effect on the staff required to respond to them. This was compounded by his blog posts relating to these responses, which it considered went beyond reasonable criticism. The Council concluded that it was appropriate to consider such public commentary as distressing to any reasonable person tasked with responding to his requests, particularly bearing in mind the more formal means of recourse available to him.
      
      
14. In its submissions to the Commissioner, the Council stated that Mr Irvine was an independent consultant representing clients in relation to equal pay claims, who also maintained a blog to campaign and comment on equal pay issues. It explained it had received many FOI requests from Mr Irvine over a number of years, all concerned with the issue of equal pay and related matters, including the Council’s job evaluation process and the remuneration of senior Council employees.
    

Significant burden

15. The Council acknowledged that it was not unusual for individuals, such as journalists, to regularly submit information requests covering a variety of issues and involving various Council departments. Similarly, in his capacity as a campaigner, Mr Irvine would be expected to submit a higher volume of requests than others. However, in Mr Irvine’s case, the Council stated, the requests were all concerned with the same matters of equal pay and the remuneration of senior Council officers, all of which required to be directed to the same Council department. 
    
    
    Harassing the Public Authority
    
    
    

    22. To evidence its position in this regard, the Council provided examples of blog posts from
        Mr Irvine’s website, which it described as disrespectful of Council officers and disparaging of their responses.
        
    23. The Council provided the Commissioner with copies of exchanges with Mr Irvine in connection with an earlier request he made in June 2015, submitting that these were demonstrative of Mr Irvine’s harassing approach when engaging with FOI staff. The Council explained that following its initial response to that request, Mr Irvine had, through his blog, publicly accused the Council of refusing to release information and of having “something to hide”. In its review response, the Council challenged these comments, informing Mr Irvine that its responses had answered his questions and that information, which Mr Irvine alleged he had obtained from another source, was publicly available on its website.
        
    24. The Council submitted that Mr Irvine’s response to the review outcome was to publish further blog posts alleging he had been “threatened”, and that the Council was trying to curb criticism of its performance pay scheme (which it described as a disingenuous account of the correspondence in question). The Council contended that Mr Irvine’s requests nowappeared more concerned with point scoring and arguing with Council officials to generate content for his blog, rather than obtaining recorded information.
    25. The Council submitted that it was difficult for Council officers to answer Mr Irvine’s requests in an atmosphere of mutual respect. It explained that, rather than exercising his right of appeal to the Commissioner (in respect of the June 2015 request), Mr Irvine had chosen to make disparaging and insinuating comments in a public forum regarding the Council’s handling of his requests. The Council argued that this demonstrated that Mr Irvine had no regard for the discomfort and harassing effect such comments could have on the staff involved in responding to his requests, leading the Council to conclude that his latest three requests had not been made in good faith. 
        
    
    
    

    Me, Vexatious? (25/03/16)

    

    
    The Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) has just upheld my latest freedom of information (FoI) appeal against North Lanarkshire Council (NLC).
    
    Now I'll share the details of the SIC decision soon, but the whole business goes back to the summer of 2015 after the NLC rejected my request for information relating to 'exit packages' and the remuneration of the Council's chief executive, on the grounds that my request was vexatious.
    
    For the moment here is a brief summary of SIC's findings:
    
    

    Decision

    The Commissioner finds that North Lanarkshire Council (the Council) failed to comply with Part 1 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) in responding to the information requests made by Mr Irvine. In particular, she finds that the Council was not entitled to refuse to comply with Mr Irvine’s requests on the basis that they were vexatious and that, in doing so, it failed to comply with section 1(1) of FOISA.  The Commissioner therefore requires the Council to respond to Mr Irvine’s requirement for review, in terms of section 21(4)(b) of FOISA, by 9 May 2016.

    
    If I remember correctly, this is the third of fourth occasion that NLC have lost appeals that I have taken to the independent Scottish Information Commissioner and you would think that instead of wasting all this time and public money, the Council would learn its lesson - and stop behaving so secretively and defensively.
    
    After all if NLC had behaved openly and transparently, as they are supposed to under the FoI legislation, then just maybe the Council would not have avoided getting into such an awful mess with its pay arrangements, as happened back in 2006/07.