An editor has urged a council to regain its past reputation for transparency after the authority was sanctioned by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

The ICO has issued an enforcement notice to the London Borough of Lewisham Council for failing to respond to hundreds of overdue requests made under the Freedom of Information Act.

It comes after the ICO found the council had a total number of 338 overdue requests for information, 221 of which were over 12 months old.

The council has accepted the ICO’s findings and has vowed to improve its performance.

Darryl Chamberlain, who edits South-East London news websites 853 and the Charlton Champion, has shared his hope the action will lead to an improvement in the authority’s FoI process.

Darryl, pictured told HTFP: “Most of my stories are about Greenwich but sometimes I’ll put a request into Lewisham about an issue that affects people this side of the boundary, or to make a comparison between two fairly similar authorities.

“Lewisham used to be reasonably efficient but it’s clear that they’ve really struggled with FoIs in the past couple of years – a couple of requests I sent took 10 months and the intervention of an ICO officer to get a response. It was as if they were just hoping the questions would go away.

“It seems to me that Lewisham has struggled with the weight of requests for information about low-traffic measures implemented during 2020, and they were simply unprepared for this.

“It’s a shame because Lewisham’s traditionally been quite open and responsive compared with other boroughs. The ICO criticised Greenwich a few years ago for failing to respond to FOIs and its performance has been much improved since then, so hopefully the same will happen with Lewisham.”

The ICO found the oldest unanswered request was submitted more than two years ago on 3 December 2020.

The enforcement notice requires the Council to respond to all outstanding requests over 20 working days old, no later than six months from the date of the notice.

It is also required to devise and publish an action plan to mitigate any future delays to FOI requests, within 35 days from the date of the notice.

Warren Seddon, Director of FoI and transparency at the ICO, said: “By failing to respond to these requests, Lewisham Council is keeping hundreds of people in the dark about information they have a right to ask for.

“People need to have confidence in the decisions being made by their local authority and this council’s failure to comply with the law erodes trust in democracy and open government.”

A council spokeswoman said: “We wholly accept the enforcement notice from the Information Commissioner’s Office and recognise our current performance in responding to freedom of information requests is not acceptable.

“We are already taking steps to address this, including bringing in extra staff to focus on resolving older cases. We are fully cooperating with the ICO and will be publishing our improvement plan in due course.”