Governing Freedom of Information in the UK

Tl;dr: the governance model of the ICO is changing and FOI isn’t well-represented in their new strategy. Here is how it could be made better.

Freedom of Information gives us the power to ask public authorities for information about their work. It has been used to uncover wrongdoing, scrutinise how public money is spent, and give communities the evidence they need to hold public bodies to account. Also, when public servants know that their decisions and records may be subject to public scrutiny, this can encourage better record-keeping and more accountable government in the first place.

Effective Freedom of Information systems require effective oversight. The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has substantial legal powers, an experienced FOI team, and a well-established role in resolving complaints and improving public authority practice. However, there are longstanding questions about how FOI is governed within an organisation whose much larger responsibility is data protection. 

The transition to the new Information Commission brings those questions into sharper focus. FOI plays a relatively small part in the proposed corporate strategy; specialist FOI expertise is not obvious within the new governance arrangements and the FOI function continues to depend on government funding at a time of increasing demand.

There are different ways these problems could be addressed. The new Information Commission can do more to give FOI strategic clarity, visibility and support within the combined regulator. Parliament can play a stronger role in scrutinising and supporting the FOI function, including how it is resourced. And, more fundamentally, FOI regulation could be separated from data protection altogether.

For an example of the last approach, we can already see this in the UK with the Scottish Information Commissioner (a dedicated regulator for the Scottish FOI system, appointed and funded via the Scottish Parliament).  This arrangement does not need to be exactly replicated, but the new Information Commission needs to show how it can deliver the same kind of strategic clarity and agenda, and build a constructive relationship with Parliament on securing this important constitutional right.

If FOI remains within the new Information Commission, the challenge is to demonstrate how the combined model will deliver those conditions in practice.

What does effective FOI oversight need?

The existence of a legal right to information does not by itself guarantee effective access to information. FOI depends on an effective regulator. 

Our 2022 Improving Oversight of Access to Information report looked at how information rights are regulated across Europe. It found that regulators need sufficient independence and resources to put their powers into practice, specialist knowledge of Access To Information law and practice, and good information about how the wider FOI system is working. This allows them not only to resolve individual complaints, but to identify where problems are occurring and intervene strategically.

The way a regulator is governed matters to its ability to do this. Its institutional purpose needs to be clear, expertise on Access To Information needs to inform its leadership and strategy, and its resources need to reflect the scale of the job it is expected to do. There also needs to be meaningful accountability for whether the regulator itself is delivering an effective FOI system.

These conditions are particularly important when FOI is one function within a much larger regulator. The Information Commission’s data protection responsibilities are substantially larger than its FOI role, with different funding arrangements, professional networks and regulatory priorities. Without deliberate arrangements to protect the strategic position of FOI, there is a risk that it becomes secondary within the priorities, governance and resources of the wider organisation.

This is the challenge facing the new Information Commission. It is not enough for the Commission simply to retain the ICO’s existing FOI responsibilities and powers. The new governance arrangements need to demonstrate how their FOI function will have the expertise and resources necessary for the regulator to use those powers effectively and improve the operation of the UK’s FOI system as a whole.

FOI within the new Information Commission

The new corporate strategy

FOI only plays a small part in the draft corporate strategy, and is not well-represented in the key strategic objectives.  

There is a proposed objective for public authorities to be “transparent and provide public information openly and on time”. The suggested measurement framework also includes FOI compliance and complaints data, alongside qualitative evidence from FOI practitioners. Measuring the health of the wider FOI system is vital: our previous research demonstrates that regulators need to better understand more than just the complaints which eventually arrive with them.

However, considering the strategy more broadly, FOI is not well-represented. In particular, it is not always clear how the Commission’s wider strategic priorities and activities apply to its Access To Information responsibilities.

This may partly reflect the origins of the strategy itself. The Data (Use and Access) Act creates new requirements around the Commission’s strategy for data protection, while FOI legislation does not create an equivalent requirement for a dedicated FOI strategy. The ICO has previously operated with a distinct strategy for its FOI work; this should be revived. 

FOI expertise within the new governance structure

The move from a single Commissioner to a Board creates new opportunities to bring a wider range of expertise into the organisation’s strategic governance. Seven non-executive members have now been appointed to the new Information Commission Board. They bring a range of experience; however, none of the members’  biographies identify specialist experience focused on information rights. FOI expertise is similarly not prominent in the published recruitment material for the new Chair.

It’s not necessarily the case that a seat on the Board needs to be reserved for an FOI specialist, but this does raise a practical question about how the Board will gather specialist Access To Information expertise and maintain strategic oversight of this part of the Commission’s responsibilities. Looking to Scotland, the Commissioner is appointed with a clear FOI remit and is expected to have experience with relevant legal/public sector matters. 

Resources and independence

Funding is another longstanding issue for FOI within the ICO. Unlike much of the ICO’s data protection activity, which is funded through fees, its FOI responsibilities are supported through government grant funding. This creates an unusual relationship in which the resources available to enforce information rights against the government are ultimately determined through the government.

This has previously had practical consequences. In evidence to Parliament in 2021, the then Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham linked resource constraints to the ICO’s ability to take enforcement action, noting that its FOI funding had fallen substantially over the preceding decade. Our comparative research subsequently identified the UK as an example where a regulator has extensive formal powers but their practical ability to deploy them could be constrained by resources.

It is important to recognise that the ICO’s performance on FOI has improved in recent years. However, we must not take this progress for granted – and the ICO is currently warning that at its current funding level increased pressure on the complaints system is increasing the size of the backlog and delays before cases are allocated. Giving evidence to the House of Commons Procedure Committee, Warren Seddon (Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency) – highlighted the increase in volume and impact on response times:

In the last 12 months, we saw our intake increase by 16% in Q1, 38% in Q2, and then 60% in Q3 and Q4. That is in a context where, historically, over two decades of the FOI Act, you see a 20% to 25% increase every five years. We have seen a massive surge in the number of complaints in the system. Although the evidence is not there to pull that apart in detail, I think AI is probably driving that.

[..]In terms of the impact on performance and how the system is working at the funding levels that we are seeing coming in right now, there is a real concern from our perspective about where we will end up. We are projecting at the moment that, by the end of this financial year, it will take about 16 months to allocate a case, which is not good from our perspective.

In a response to an FOI request, the ICO highlighted both the increase in workload and that they have been unable to secure an increase in budget to reflect this:

[D]espite bidding for more resource to recruit more staff at the last Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), this was not successful. We continue to engage with government on this issue, but as a result, we currently anticipate allocation and wait times will continue to grow as approximately 400 excess cases a month are being added to our caseload. 

Improvements to processes and technology may all help the regulator use its existing resources more effectively, but there is a limit to how far operational improvements can compensate for a sustained mismatch between workload and resources.

Responding to the Information Commission strategy

The current consultation on the Information Commission’s corporate strategy provides an immediate opportunity to strengthen the place of FOI within the new organisation.

The draft strategy includes an outcome focused on public authorities being transparent and providing information openly and on time, as well as proposals to use compliance, complaints and practitioner evidence to understand FOI performance.

However, it is less clear how these commitments connect to the wider strategy: how the Commission will use its regulatory powers and resources to achieve this FOI outcome, how progress will be scrutinised, and how the experience of people using FOI will inform its approach.

Proposals to strengthen the strategy:

• Explain how the corporate strategy applies to the Commission’s FOI work. The inclusion of an outcome on public authority transparency is welcome, but it is not always clear how the wider priorities in the strategy apply to the Commission’s Access To Information responsibilities. The final strategy should make clearer how the FOI outcome connects to regulatory priorities, activities, enforcement and resources.
• Commit to a dedicated FOI strategy. A more detailed Access To Information strategy sitting underneath the corporate strategy could explain how the Commission intends to approach casework, enforcement, systemic intervention, public authority compliance and the wider health of the FOI system.
• Measure the health of the FOI system from both sides. The proposed use of compliance, complaints and practitioner evidence is welcome. This should be complemented by evidence from requesters, alongside measures covering areas such as timeliness, disclosure, internal review and appeals. This would give the Commission a fuller picture of how FOI is working, beyond the cases that eventually reach it.
• Connect FOI ambitions to the resources required to deliver them. The Commission’s commitments on public authority transparency need to be supported by sufficient capacity within its FOI function. The final strategy should make clearer how the Commission will assess the resources required to meet its FOI responsibilities, particularly in the context of changing complaint volumes.
• Explain how FOI will be overseen within the new governance structure. With the move to a Board, the strategy could provide greater clarity about how specialist access-to-information expertise will inform decision-making and how the Board will scrutinise delivery of the Commission’s FOI responsibilities.
• Make engagement with FOI users and civil society more concrete. Continuing structured engagement with requesters, journalists, civil society and practitioners would give the Commission access to different perspectives on how the system is working in practice.

A stronger role for Parliament

Beyond the scope of the consultation, Parliament should play a greater role in supporting the independence and sustainability of FOI oversight.

Freedom of Information is a right created by Parliament, and the Information Commission is responsible for enforcing that right against public authorities, including the government itself. There is a reasonable argument that Parliament should have a stronger role in ensuring that the regulator has the resources it needs.

There are possible models (along the lines of the approach taken for the Electoral Commission) where a parliamentary committee rather than a government department is the sponsor. The ICO would submit an estimate for its FOI work to a parliamentary body, supported by independent audit and scrutiny, before the funding was approved through Parliament. This would help insulate decisions about FOI funding from the government whose compliance the ICO is responsible for regulating. It could also give Parliament a clearer role in scrutinising whether the ICO has the resources it needs, and how effectively those resources are being used.

There are precedents for this kind of arrangement. A number of independent constitutional and scrutiny bodies have funding arrangements involving parliamentary committees rather than conventional departmental sponsorship.

In Scotland, the Information Commission is funded through the Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body and is subject to parliamentary scrutiny of both its resources and its performance. The Commissioner appears annually before the relevant parliamentary committee to discuss the office’s annual report and operational performance.

A separate FOI regulator?

One option for creating greater institutional clarity around FOI is to separate out the responsibilities for Access To Information and data protection.

The case for separation reflects the increasingly different scale and focus of the two functions. Data protection has developed into a much larger regulatory field, supported by an international profession and increasingly complex regulatory responsibilities. Within a combined regulator, there is a risk that the smaller FOI function has less influence over institutional strategy, leadership and resources.

A separate regulator would make responsibility for FOI explicit. It could provide a clear institutional purpose, specialist leadership and governance focused specifically on the effective operation of the FOI system. The Scottish Information Commissioner demonstrates some of the practical advantages of this clarity: there is an identifiable regulator with a specific FOI remit and a direct relationship with Parliament around its funding and performance.

Separation may not fix all issues automatically. Our comparative research found advantages to both specialist and combined oversight bodies. A larger combined regulator should, in theory, benefit from shared infrastructure, resources and greater institutional weight, while a separate regulator without sufficient resources or independence would not necessarily provide more effective oversight.

The important question is what institutional arrangements best deliver effective FOI regulation in practice. If responsibility for FOI remains within the Information Commission, the combined model needs to demonstrate how it will provide the strategic clarity, specialist expertise, resources and accountability that separation could provide more directly. Government and Parliament, in turn, need to ensure that the wider funding and governance arrangements make this possible.

Where next?

The creation of the Information Commission is an opportunity to strengthen the governance of FOI. There are actions that can be taken now within the new Commission, including giving FOI greater strategic clarity, making responsibility for it clearer within the new governance structure, and ensuring that its ambitions are matched by the resources needed to deliver them.

There is also a role for Parliament. Regardless of whether FOI continues to sit within a combined regulator or is ultimately separated from data protection, Parliament can play a stronger role in scrutinising the health of the FOI system and ensuring that its regulator has the independence and resources it needs. The government also has a responsibility to ensure that the wider regulatory and funding framework supports effective FOI oversight.

The Scottish Information Commissioner provides a useful example of how governance, funding and accountability can be aligned around a clear FOI purpose. If FOI is to remain within the new Information Commission, it should be clear how the combined model will provide the same kind of strategic clarity and focus, alongside a constructive relationship with Parliament that supports the effective protection of the right to information.

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Photo by Maksym Kaharlytskyi on Unsplash

Authors:  Ben Worthy (Birkbeck), Laszlo Horvath (Birkbeck), Julia Cushion (mySociety), Alex Parsons(mySociety)

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Artificial Intelligence, as we know, is everywhere. For governments and public bodies, the possibilities for policy-making seem endless. As the UK government put it in its AI playbook ‘the potential of AI to transform public services is enormous, giving us an unparalleled opportunity to do things differently and deliver more with less’.

As with every other part of government, AI use has spread across local government in the UK. According to the Local Government Association around 70% of councils are now using them in frontline services, with almost all councils ‘using or exploring AI’ in some way.

What is less clear is what AI is exactly being used for, and how far advanced the work is. Are these experiments? Will pilots be abandoned? More importantly, how easy is it to make AI assisted policies democratically accountable? It is not clear how transparent and accountable these new AI policies are, or how they can be scrutinised.

Looking at London

London’s 32 boroughs are at the forefront of AI use and adoption. This 2025 survey put London’s local government at the top of the UK innovators, alongside Scotland. The London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) is co-ordinating work and ideas, and several councils have partnerships with universities. 

Our joint project tried a first mapping of London’s local government to try and see more clearly where AI tools are being used in frontline policy areas and to get a sense of how transparent they are. To map the landscape, we used a combination of methods, including use of primary published official documents (strategy papers, charters), media searches and surveys (such as by the LGA), as well as logs of FOI requests already made. We hope this gives a first insight into where AI policy is happening, and how open and accountable it is to the public.

Where is AI happening?

In line with the wider picture, the most popular area for AI use in London is around Adult Social Care, particularly with use of AI for notes and minute takers. This isn’t surprising given that, for every £1 local councils spend, 39p of it goes on adult social care. The second most popular area for AI use was housing, then followed by AI chatbots for citizen contact. There was then a long tail of rather varied use from CCTV to planning.

It needs to be remembered that not all of these innovations are equal in size: for example Hillingdon’s AI chatbot covers 40% of all citizen interaction. Measuring the exact impact of each policy is complex, as some supposed ‘backroom’ services may make a difference to front-facing policy, as this experiment showed.

Areas of AI use across London Boroughs

Area	Sub Area	Occurrence
Adult Social care	Notes, pain checker, alarms	12
Housing	Mould, HMO, Rent, Complaints	7
AI Chatbot citizen contact		5
Backroom		4
AI Chatbot translation		3
AI Children services		2
Planning	Analysis of applications	2
Surveillance	CCTV	2
Traffic	Potholes, Monitoring	2
Waste	Fly tipping	2
FOI	Chatbot, collate	2

 

So, at least for London, we can see that AI policy is happening, mainly across particular policy areas and in certain forms, but with experiments and innovations spreading across new areas.

How transparent and accountable are AI policies?

We then tried to map and trace various ways in which you can potentially access information about these policies. Some may be proactively published by councils — such as policy documents— and some are legal routes to access— such as FOI or Data protection. Others are voluntary/mandatory schemes— like the Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS) (not mandatory for local government but advised).

In 2024 the National Audit Office were concerned that accountability was a bit of a ‘patchwork’. Our analysis found the same, that there is a patchwork of transparency approaches. There are some signs of direct access, with published data (via data strategies) and FOI being the most common ways to find out. About a third of authorities have a published strategy/charter; eight have received FOI requests about this, and eight had mentions of it in meetings. The local media have played a role with stories. In terms of indirect access other less focused forms included publicity, trade media reporting and internal oversight from debates and council meetings. These tools created in turn varying degrees of data and transparency.

Transparency tools for AI use across London boroughs

AI Use	Council count	Notes
Oversight Board	4	3 others ‘in progress’
Joint Working Bodies (with University)	2
Transparency documents (documents/strategy)	11
Recorded on Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (ATRS	4	[Plus GLC}
Transparency (stories in local media)	16
Transparency (FOI Log with FOI requests on AI)	8	61 FOI requests in total
Transparency (mention in council meetings, committees etc)	8

 

Despite the London Office of Technology recommending a specific board of experts, few authorities have them (yet), with just four having one in place. The overall picture again is patchy and unclear – there’s no one fixed mechanism being put in place or used.

The patchy landscape of AI transparency in London is somewhat troubling if we consider that, in many respects, London is the least demanding test for public sector transparency. Its boroughs have been experimenting with algorithmic tools for some years, and that experimentation has unfolded alongside comparatively well-developed local scrutiny, for example through local media or via London’s universities. If a minimum set of transparency practices were going to take hold anywhere, one would expect it to be here with reasonable institutional capacity.

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Image: David Monaghan

In a speech introducing his political agenda, the (in-all-likelihood) future Prime Minister Andy Burnham discussed changes to the whipping system in Westminster, with promises of “letting MPs be authentic representatives and not using the whip system to create fear or close down debate”.

This is a theme he covered at more length in his book (co-authored with Steve Rotheram) Head North. Their argument is that the whipping system fits into the wider problem of centralisation in British politics, where tight central control over how MPs vote moves power towards an even smaller number of people, who make worse decisions because the wider expertise of the party’s MPs are excluded from the process. Moving power away from MPs throws away the knowledge of place that those MPs represent. 

Here are three practical reforms to parliamentary whipping that address this complaint:

• Define the whip – give a clear scope and bounds to acceptable and unacceptable approaches
• Co-produce the whip – involve the parliamentary party in shaping the party line
• Publish the whip – produce clear public justification for voting instructions

These are reforms that can be implemented by any party without changes to parliamentary processes, but would be improved by changes to parliamentary processes to entrench and support them. 

What is the whip?

In the House of Commons, most votes are “whipped”, meaning MPs are expected to vote in accordance with the instructions the party has given.

There are different schools of thought on what the balance should be between parties and MPs. MPs are elected as individuals, but usually as part of a party with manifesto promises. As such, party discipline is not inherently illegitimate: there is a democratic argument that parties act as an intermediary that can keep their MPs aligned with the public mandate they got in the election. 

In this argument, MPs acting as completely free agents is bad for public accountability. Unlike parties, voters have no mechanisms between elections to keep MPs aligned with election promises, and very poor ones at elections, which work better as an informed choice between party agendas rather than 650 separate elections. 

That said, there is a big gap between this justification for the whip and how it works in practice. Burnham’s complaint is that in practice the whip is not forcing unruly MPs in line with their constituents: it’s doing the opposite. Party discipline goes far beyond just issues that were part of the manifesto and centralises decision making power in ways that make how MPs vote more distant from their constituencies:

“The minute [MPs] walk through the door to take their seats, the power given to them by the public is removed and effectively handed to a small number of their elected colleagues and many more unelected advisers who set the party lines and positions for which they are required to vote. 

“As a result, the whip system disempowers MPs, diminishes their status and, over time, disconnects them from their constituents. It makes you say things you’re not sure about and vote for things you don’t believe in. At its worst, the whip system unfairly makes good people seem like frauds.” 

There is room for these different perspectives on the whip to be reconciled through approaches that remain disciplined and cohesive, but that are also more transparent and emerge from more collaborative approaches to politics. 

Define the whip

A simple first step would be to write down what the expected “bounds” of party management are. 

This would be a statement that itemises political consequences the whip may impose (e.g. an ongoing pattern making it less likely that an MP will be chosen for government roles), versus approaches to party discipline on voting that would not be acceptable (such as denying absence slips, suspension from the party, losing funding for constituency projects, or intimidation). 

This could also set the scope for when the party has the clearest legitimate interest in whipping (votes related to manifesto issues), and confirm rules that there are certain votes (conscience votes, votes on house matters) where either the party might not take a position, or where there are no sanctions attached to not following that position. 

This should be an easy win, and is mostly restating what should already be good practice, or returning to an earlier set of norms. As Philip Cowley notes there’s been a substantial increase in MPs being suspended from the party for voting against the whip, with none in ten years of the Blair government compared to eleven in the first year of the Starmer government. A statement returning to that Blair-era norm would be a substantial reset in relations between the leadership and the parliamentary party. 

Writing the rules down is also part of making Parliament more normal. The “Whips” are a combination of what could boringly be called “party managers”, and a more secretive role, where the ambiguity allows them to contribute to the worst aspects of Parliamentary culture. The threats, bullying and blackmail are always said to be a thing of the past, but where “the past” becomes ever more recent as new stories surface. Greater transparency helps shift this balance, establishing party managers as a legitimate part of the Parliamentary system, whose actions are aligned with an effective and professional working culture. 

This step would, however, not be enough to address Burnham’s objections to the outcomes of the whipping system. To engage with the substance of the complaint means changing not just how whips behave, but how the decisions on the party line are made. 

Co-produce the whip

The substance of Burnham’s complaint is not just that he was told what to do, but he was told to do the wrong thing because the parliamentary party was not involved in setting the policy. 

As he put it, “the government I served in would have helped itself if it had trusted the majority feeling in the [Parliamentary Labour Party] rather than continue to force on it the preferred position of a small number of people at the heart of government.” What we need are approaches that mean the parliamentary party is more involved in setting the line it is then expected to follow. Here we can look to the German Parliament for useful approaches. 

The “free mandate” of German MPs to vote in accordance with their conscience is constitutionally protected. However, in practice, this ends up in a very similar place to the UK Parliament, where MPs almost always vote along party lines. The big difference between these systems is that in Germany the “party line” is not purely dictated by the leadership, but emerges from processes involving party MPs. 

In the German system, MPs in each party form working groups that shadow parliamentary committees. These are substantial policy-making bodies for the party, provided with parliamentary resources and researchers to support their work. 

If we shifted towards a similar system, MPs would develop deeper policy expertise and be more directly involved in shaping the party position on that area or piece of legislation, while MPs not part of that area defer to the process and wisdom of their more engaged colleagues. This reflects the party discipline that is important to clear lines of accountability to voters, while addressing the complaint that centralisation of decision-making throws away the intelligence and moral sense of MPs. 

Aspects of this happen already, and a step a new government could take is to take more formal notice of working groups, encouraging them to form through expectations that the whips office and ministers will engage with them. In time, more parliamentary resources could be made available to parties to support these groups. Another intermediate approach would be to allow the parliamentary party to select its membership on public bill committees, which in theory review legislation but in practice the whips select against members with specialisms in the area to maintain central control of the process. 

MPs are responsible for how they vote, but are judged collectively. The goal for MPs should be higher than the right to say “I didn’t agree with that decision”. This might be satisfying personally, but doesn’t help the people affected by bad decisions (and is unlikely to be electorally rewarded). The goal is to advocate and demand processes that lead to good collective decisions. 

Whether that’s the German model, an evolution of bill committees or something entirely new, the question is not just how we move away from centralising structures, but what new ones we need in their place that act as a counter pressure to government departments in the legislative process. 

Publish the whip

If parties are going to instruct MPs how to vote, they should tell us they’re doing that. Obviously we know in the abstract that most votes are whipped, but in the public record only the votes of individuals are visible.

It’s not that knowing the party instructions would excuse a bad result (MPs are ultimately responsible for how they vote), but it would play an important public education role in both how Parliament works and the quality of the decision making process. 

One of the long running effects of TheyWorkForYou has been to encourage MPs to make more public justifications of how they vote. Publishing the whip would be an extension of that, encouraging parties to make full descriptions of their reasons for votes. This would be a good incentive to move towards a more co-produced process, where the work of producing recommendations has public as well as internal outputs. 

We think greater transparency is the friend of better processes — helping draw power away from centralised and secretive processes towards those that need to explain and justify themselves in public. It’s also popular: 62% of the public agreed that parties should be public with how they instruct their MPs to vote. Committing to publish the whipping information would represent a public commitment to a new way of working, that helps encourage and entrench better practice. 

Building what comes next

Party discipline is a key feature of modern parliamentary democracy, but the specifics of “the whip” in the House of Commons are not. It has changed over time, and can be changed again.  Other places do things differently, and we can look there for ideas about how things can change.

The challenge for Burnham (and for Labour MPs who want to seize the opportunity) is to go beyond just minimising the drawbacks of the current system. What’s needed is to define the new institutions and processes that deliver the goals of a collaborative approach to politics, making the most out of the judgement and skills of MPs, to raise the standard of how decisions are made in Parliament. 

 

Header image: House of Commons Division Lobby | @House of Commons | House of Commons | Flickr 

Back in May, I gave evidence as part of a panel to the UK Parliament’s procedure committee investigation into parliamentary written questions (WQ), with a focus on the overlap with FOI. 

You can watch the video, or read our written evidence and the transcript of our oral evidence, but in this blog post I’m going to dive into how this issue interacts with issues in the wider FOI/complaints system. 

Why are WQs worse at getting good responses?

We’ve written about the differences between FOI and WQ before, and the basic thing the committee is digging around is that despite on paper they are mostly equivalent regimes, FOI is sometimes more effective at getting information. In theory, this shouldn’t happen. WQs are allowed to take up slightly more official time to answer, and should be answered sooner.

In practice though, FOI can get information released that was denied through WQs — which fits into a general complaint about insubstantial responses to WQs, and gives external validation to the idea that the system is falling short. 

Our theory on this is that it follows back from a key difference between the two regimes. FOI has an appeal system: you can ask for an internal review, and then appeal to the relevant information commissioner and the courts. Additionally FOI and WQs are dealt with by different teams, so while both make decisions based on FOI rules, one has a better sense of external feedback through appeals, and the other does not.

Our pitch as a solution to this is it should be possible to convert a WQ to an FOI after first refusal to access the appeal mechanism. This both gives an immediate point of appeal to parliamentarians, but also grounds the parliamentary affairs team in the practical experience of FOI in the wider ecosystem. 

The FOI appeal system is in trouble

However, tying the WQ process to the FOI appeal system raises the issue that all is not well in how appeals are working at the moment. 

Our research on FOI across Europe really brought home to me the importance of the appeal system as something that keeps the wider system working: the commissioner should not be fixing problems everywhere, but regular and timely decisions and interventions help bring practice at public authorities into sync. In the absence of this, there is little to constrain bad actors in delaying or obstructing a request. 

That’s the theory — but the practice can still present significant obstacles. As Democracy for Sale’s Jenna Corderoy told the committee: 

Unfortunately, though, I want to draw attention to the current FOI appeal system; it is a long and drawn-out process. If you are requesting an internal review, you are looking at 20 to 40 working days to get a response. If you are unhappy and go to the ICO, you are looking at a long time to get a case officer to conduct an assessment of the handling of your request. By the time it goes to the tribunal, you are looking at about a year into the process. In theory, it is good to have an appeal system, but it can unfortunately take a long time, and it takes the sting out of the newsworthiness of your original request.

And this is getting worse, not better. As we heard from both information commissioners at FOI Fest (an FOI conference we ran with the wider FOI Network), the appeals system is under significant strain at the moment, with a massive increase in appeals, likely due to AI. This is not unique to FOI: Martin Rosenbaum has found that there is an increase in volume across ombudsman and complaints processes.

Warren Seddon (ICO)’s evidence to the committee showed the problems this leads to for timeliness of responses:

In the last 12 months, we saw our intake increase by 16% in Q1, 38% in Q2, and then 60% in Q3 and Q4. That is in a context where, historically, over two decades of the FOI Act, you see a 20% to 25% increase every five years. We have seen a massive surge in the number of complaints in the system. Although the evidence is not there to pull that apart in detail, I think AI is probably driving that.

[..]In terms of the impact on performance and how the system is working at the funding levels that we are seeing coming in right now, there is a real concern from our perspective about where we will end up. We are projecting at the moment that, by the end of this financial year, it will take about 16 months to allocate a case, which is not good from our perspective.

A general increase in FOI is distributed over a lot of different authorities, but an increase in complaints means that high intensity casework is channelled in higher quantities to the commissioner’s office. The end result at the moment is an increase (and expected continued increase) in waiting time for cases to be assigned. This causes much wider problems through the system because authorities that want to drag their feet have a realistic understanding that the ICO is going to take a long time to overrule them.

Dealing with increased complaints

We’ve published our thoughts about dealing with AI-driven demand, and for FOI we think this should be a spur towards greater publication of response, converting what can currently be private benefit into a public benefit that helps reduce other requests, but also makes the act of answering a request far more socially valuable because the information is more widely available. 

But this is less the case for the complaints part of the process, which is more resource intensive than answering a request. In some cases, there may be efficiencies to be made, or triage to remove AI-generated complaints that are based on hallucinated ideas of the law. But in general, these complaints are not necessarily illegitimate, and can represent an increase in valid complaints made because the barrier to entry has been lowered. 

Seddon’s evidence brought up that the ICO’s FOI budget for the year (which is set by the government) was, in real terms, a decrease on last year,  which with an increased case load can only lead to more delays.

There isn’t a clever solution to this one — but there is a boring one. Our information commissioners, ombudsman and complaints systems need more money to process an increase in complaints. In the absence of this, the wider public systems they maintain will not have the anchoring of an effective complaint system. There are costs and benefits to AI, and sometimes we’re going to need to pay more as a society to maintain and improve these chokepoints in our redress systems. 

Taking an interest in wider FOI

So to bring this back to Parliament, one of the things we’d like is that Parliament pay attention to FOI. It’s not just a constitutionally good thing, but is part of the information environment of Parliament itself.

MPs make use of FOI themselves: Ben Worthy discussed how FOI and WQs represented different tools that can be used by legislators:

They spoke of using PQs as a very quick and convenient way to obtain some information—one interview described it as a ready-made press release—whereas Freedom of Information lent itself more towards long-term investigative work, digging deeper into an issue or building a national picture. 

But FOI is also part of the wider information environment, leading to both informed public and parliamentary discussion. MPs regularly highlight information released by FOI by journalists, academics and constituents as part of their contributions to debates. 

Along these lines, there were some interesting questions to the Cabinet Office witnesses around how performance data is gathered and judged. It’d be great to see more recognition from Parliament about FOI’s role in supporting public discourse, and how they can support that.

Cost limits

This evidence session also provided an opportunity to get some more information on the record about floated changes to FOI cost limits. Cat Smith (Committee Chair) brought up, unprompted, that the written questions cost limit is currently pegged to 140% of the FOI cost limit, so there is awareness that the two systems are linked. 

Jenna Corderoy pointed out that reduced cost limits would have a negative impact for users of FOI; t that AI shouldn’t be used “as an excuse to reduce cost limits” and that “any reductions on limits are most likely to have a serious impact on the ability to access information that is in the public interest.”. 

I made a point about the potential for improved AI search technologies to make it easier to discover information (not just for FOI, but for the government to better understand itself). 

This also saw the first public comment from ICO on this floated change, with the view that the current limit is broadly working fine:

Warren Seddon: The cost limit has not changed. There has been a bit of debate about it in the past, but it broadly works as it stands. It is well used; if you look at the central Government statistics, around a quarter of refusals are due to the cost limit, so it is in play a lot, and we see it a lot in the complaints that we get.

Interestingly the Cabinet Office witnesses, when given the chance, did not talk a lot about AI-induced demand as a reason to lock down: 

Chair: In your incoming FOI requests, do you see a lot of evidence that AI is playing a role in the input?

Clare Brunton: I do not think so. I asked that question of Eirian before this session. Obviously it is hard to tell because you cannot always tell what is being written by AI, but when you look at the trends of FOIs, there has not been a huge uptick as AI comes in. It has been quite a steady growth. I am sure some of that is AI, but actually it has been a fairly steady growth over the last 20 years or so anyway. We have not noticed any spikes.

Eirian Walsh Atkins: As the earlier panel said, where people are using AI is at the more complex end of FOI, in the complaint stages and in litigation to help them with those slightly trickier processes. I do not think that AI is being used significantly in initial requests to the Cabinet Office.

So this panel provided no strong evidence or opinions that cost limits would solve current problems of FOI, while focusing in on the issue of the complaints system, where a key issue is under-funding of the ICO (and equivalent ombudsman processes).

Better governance need better information

Fundamentally, Freedom of Information has been a massive success that has made the information environment (in public and in parliament) richer. It provides a benchmark to assess that the Parliamentary written questions system is not keeping pace with legal right to information that the Act gives us all. 

But at the same time, it’s not good enough. Both active pushback from government and wider shifts in technology and how public services are run risk making it a less effective and useful system. 

It’s great to see MPs asking questions about FOI, and we hope it’s followed up with more attention paid to this vital constitutional system.

 

Header image: Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

Today we’ve published a new report with Sitra, the Finnish Innovation Fund, exploring how a future European civic tech hub could strengthen democratic participation across Europe.

You can read it online, or download as a PDF. 

Drawing on interviews with 19 civic tech organisations from 12 countries, we’ve wrestled with the opportunities and challenges facing participation and pro-democracy tech across Europe.

We’ve structured the report around three progress areas: increasing demand, strengthening supply, and optimising implementation. For each area, we identify both short term activities and longer term ambitions.

Recommendations

Jump to the recommendations section of the report

1. Increased demand

A recurring theme from our interviews was that the technical issues were only half of the problem. Many public authorities still need support to see participation itself as a valuable tool for better decision-making.

As a result, the report recommends that the hub should initially focus on practical support: helping people find existing resources, connecting them with networks, and showcasing successful examples. Over time, this can contribute to a broader shift where participation is increasingly seen as a normal and valuable part of governance.

2. Strengthened supply

A lot of our interviewees discussed the challenges they face as organisations building participation technology.

We heard that key barriers include procurement requirements, certification costs, and uncertainty around sustainable business models. The tensions between open vs closed source tech in the current market came up regularly, but we’ve tried to take a balanced approach.

Rather than treating open and closed source approaches as a binary choice, we think the hub can support a diverse ecosystem while reducing barriers to openness, collaboration and interoperability.

3. Optimised implementation

Here we’re trying to unite supply and demand.

We think there needs to be stronger links between civic tech practitioners, democratic innovators, universities and public authorities, alongside support for pilots in places where participation is less established. Longer term, we’d like the hub to explore approaches such as shared testing environments and procurement reform that would make participation technology easier to adopt and scale.

4.  Cross cutting themes

Finally, there are two cross-cutting themes that we wanted to recognise, even though they’re not central to our recommendations. 

The first is the importance of political buy-in. Successful participation processes require political leaders who are willing to engage with the outcomes, whatever they may be. The second is the growing impact of AI. Interviewees highlighted both the opportunities AI creates for participation technology and the new challenges it poses around regulation, platform governance and digital infrastructure. 

In summary

Overall, our conclusion is that the most valuable role for a European civic tech hub is to reduce friction across the ecosystem: helping authorities find trusted resources, supporting organisations to navigate barriers, sharing evidence of what works, and creating the conditions for participation to become a more routine part of democratic decision-making.

Read the full report, and watch our launch event.

Any questions, comments or feedback? Get in touch tictec@mysociety.org

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Photo by and machines on Unsplash

We’ve just started a new project exploring how improved data and training could help youth services in England – building their financial sustainability and representing their communities at a national policy level.

Working with the Social Investment Business (SIB), which coordinates the government’s Youth Investment Fund, we’ll be talking to youth organisations across the North of England between now and July, to understand what challenges they face with coordinating action, demonstrating support, and evidencing impact for fundraising.

Through a short series of interviews, workshops, and free online training sessions, we’ll find out together where there might be opportunities to build these organisations’ capacity for data analysis and engagement with public authorities.

We’ve already seen how climate and nature organisations have used the Local Intelligence Hub to identify local partners, compare approaches nationally, and prepare for conversations with their councillors and MPs. Through this project, we’ll get a chance to explore whether that same model could help organisations in the youth sector to build stronger partnerships and deliver their services more effectively.

Nick Temple, SIB CEO, said: “One of the key challenges we hear from youth organisations is how hard it can be to evidence their impact while juggling frontline delivery. This project with mySociety gives us a valuable opportunity to explore practical ways that data, insight and shared learning can support organisations to grow stronger, collaborate more effectively, and make their voices heard—building on the legacy of the Youth Investment Fund for the long term.”

We’ll be inviting current and former YIF grantees to get involved, via SIB’s network, shortly.

But if you’re a youth organisation in the wider sector and would like to find out more about the project, or how your organisation could make the most of mySociety’s other tools like TheyWorkForYou and WhatDoTheyKnow, you can still be involved – just get in touch!

In a recent blog post, we set out why proposals to reduce the Freedom of Information cost limit would reduce government transparency, without meaningfully reducing the burden on public authorities, since then the opposition to the move has grown. 

What’s the problem?

On 18 March 2026, The Financial Times reported that the government is considering lowering the cost limit for FOI (and therefore increasing the amount of FOI requests that can be rejected). The justification given for this is rising request volumes,  financial pressure on departmental budgets, and a mooted national security question (paywalled link).

What people are saying

Across our FOI network and beyond, these arguments have been widely challenged. In his initial blog post, journalist George Greenwood argues that the risks being cited are already well understood and already addressed within existing FOI exemptions. He goes further in the Times (paywalled), describing the proposals as a “democratic retreat” that would make it harder to uncover government wrongdoing and major public scandals. 

Looking at the cost argument, Jenna Corderoy’s piece for Democracy for Sale highlights how departments have spent significant sums fighting FOI requests in tribunal, often unsuccessfully. This shows that some of the highest costs of the FOI system are not just from processing requests, but are the result of  departmental decisions to resist disclosure in the first place.

Claire Miller’s #FOIFriday roundup questions whether FOI admin costs are significant in the context of overall public spending, and highlights evidence that lowering cost limits is unlikely to reduce overall workload. Instead, Claire points to the role of internal reviews, complaints, and inefficient handling as key drivers of cost, and emphasises the benefits of proactive publication and better systems.

Editorial and institutional voices have also weighed in. A Sunday Times editorial (paywalled) frames the proposals as part of a broader pattern of excessive government secrecy, warning that lowering the cost limit would create a “serious democratic deficit”. The Society of Editors has similarly warned that restricting FOI would damage press freedom and make it harder for journalists to hold power to account.

Sector-specific responses highlight the wider impact. The Committee for Academic Freedom have written that lowering the cost limit would disproportionately affect complex, investigative requests, and in a university setting transparency is already hard-won, so scrutiny efforts should be supported, not diminished. The Press Gazette has argued that reducing the cost limit would put public interest information “beyond scrutiny”.

The story has reached elected representatives too: last week local councillors in North Yorkshire raised concerns about how a possible cost limit reduction would negatively impact local government transparency.

What are the real problems, and where can solutions be found?

The current debate reflects real pressures within the system, but the response from across the FOI community and beyond is clear that restricting access to information is not the answer. 

If the aim is to reduce cost and pressure, there are better ways to do it. Efforts to reduce access to information risk introducing larger costs elsewhere, including from inefficiency, poor decision-making, and reduced public trust. Better proactive disclosure from authorities will mean fewer requests need to be made, and fewer fights at tribunal level would save the government money. 

Transparency is not a “nice to have” that can be scaled back when budgets are tight.  It is an essential component of public services that work in the public interest. Governments that think they cannot afford transparency will be surprised at the corruption and inefficiency they will need to afford in its absence.

We’ll be continuing to write and campaign on this issue, make sure you’re signed up to our mailing list if you want to be notified of any developments. 

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

 

Key points

• Lowering the cost limit time would reduce the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, giving government departments greater leeway to deny requests.
• This  will have a disproportionate effect on high-impact Freedom of Information requests made by journalists and researchers. 
• It represents a new restriction on public scrutiny of government, counter to promises around improved government transparency, such as the promised roll-out of FOI to contractors providing government services. 
• It is unlikely to significantly reduce the volume of work required to process requests – local governments also receive a comparable volume of requests at a lower cost limit, and there are administrative costs even if a request is rejected under a new, lower cost limit. 
• Transparency is not a nice extra to have that can be cut when the budgets are tight. Governments that think they cannot afford transparency will be surprised at the corruption and inefficiency they will need to afford in its absence.
• The actual solution to volume is improved government processes. Reducing the cost limit might increase admin burden on authorities (due to increased back and forth with requesters) whereas better proactive publication genuinely could reduce volume of requests by removing the need to request in the first place.

What’s being proposed?

A policy is being floated, around decreasing the FOI cost limit in order to address an increase in the volume of requests. 

Financial Times: UK considers FOI clampdown as requests soar:

British officials are considering a clampdown on the freedom of information system in a move that would spark backlash from transparency campaigners.

Government figures are discussing a reduction in the cost ceiling for processing a request as the number of annual submissions has spiralled, according to people familiar with the situation.

The soaring number of requests comes against a backdrop of heavily constrained Whitehall budgets, they added.

There are no further details beyond this briefing. Our assumption is that the proposal is for a reduction to the central government cost limit (see below), but with no details on the scale implied. 

As reflected in the FT story, because of central government statistics, we can see that this increase mostly relates to defence records being moved to the National Archives. It is also worth putting in the context of a separate attempt to justify restrictions based on national security. 

 

What is the cost limit?

The “appropriate limit” is the time allowed to deal with an FOI request. 

At the start of the FOI process, a cost is estimated for the likely time it will take to locate, retrieve and provide the requested information (but not time taken in doing public benefits tests or applying redactions). 

It has a value in cash, but this is pegged against a set cost per hour (£25 an hour in UK FOI, £15 in Scottish FOI).  So effectively this is a time allowed in hours:

• £600 (40 hours) – Scottish FOI
• £850 (34 hours) – Parliamentary questions
• £600 (24 hours) – Central government FOI
• £450 (18 hours) – Other public bodies FOI

A related part of the rules is that authorities can aggregate similar requests (for similar information by connected people and made within 60 working days) and apply the cost limit to them collectively. Authorities may interpret this quite broadly if the requests share an overarching theme or are handled by the same team. 

Another relevant system is parliamentary questions, where the search time is pegged to 140% the cost limit for central government. The resulting ceiling is £850 (34 hours). 

How are the cost limits changed?

The cost limits for UK FOI are set by The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. 

A new set of regulations could be made without a vote in Parliament.  The cost limits are changed via a statutory instrument passed by the negative procedure. This means the government lays the change before Parliament, and it automatically becomes law without a vote. 

MPs can sign a petition to call for a vote to annul it, but there is no automatic threshold where a certain number of signatures requires a vote. Generally it requires support of the official opposition to get a debate. 

What would be the effect of reducing the cost limit?

The likely effect of reducing the cost limit would be to prevent a class of currently useful and productive FOI requests, without significantly reducing volume or administrative costs. 

Who would this affect the most?

As the existing cost limit already rules out very broad requests, the change in any reduction would fall mostly on the most complex requests allowed by the current rules – and as such is likely to disproportionately affect journalistic and researcher use of FOI. Exploratory requests would need to be framed more narrowly, and a lower limit combined with the aggregation rule would make it easier for authorities to chain related requests together and deny them.

Any reduction in the central government cost limit would also have a knock-on effect on parliamentary questions, as the search time is linked. 

Would it reduce administrative costs?

This change would have a mixed effect on administrative costs: marking a bigger set of FOI requests as invalid has costs of its own. 

Reducing the cost limit would give more leeway to authorities to refuse requests when the documents requested are difficult to provide, but would be targeting a narrow band between what was previously acceptable and the new limit.  A lower threshold invites more dispute about the threshold, and requires justification for it falling in a narrow range, potentially causing more back and forth with requesters. What should happen in these cases is that authorities give advice and assistance on reducing the scope of the request to help fit inside the cost limit. Failing to do this has been noted in ICO decision notices about whether the exemption was applied correctly. As such, administrative savings are likely to be disappointing, as a lower cost limit creates work of its own. 

The natural experiment of the two different cost limits also does not suggest reducing would have a large effect on volume. The lack of comprehensive FOI stats means we do not have an up-to-date figure, but in 2017, local and central governments had comparable volumes of average FOI requests – despite the difference in the cost limit. 

What is a better approach to FOI volume?

Increased FOI volume raises the importance of efficient discovery and publication of information. Rather than reducing public transparency, public authorities should invest in their own processes and data to better meet internal and external needs. 

Public authorities need to be good at managing information — not just to answer FOI requests, but in order to work effectively. The effect of improved technology should be to make it easier for authorities to understand the information they hold, both for their own purposes and for public transparency.

More value can be realised by each FOI request released through improved disclosure logs. WhatDoTheyKnow.com removes the need for future FOI requests by making previous requests easier to find, with far more users of the site viewing information that has been published in previous FOI responses rather than making new requests. Public authorities can help reduce duplicate requests by publishing disclosure logs that make information released available to search engines (including AI agents), delivering more impact to releases and reducing repeated costs. This also helps address the social cost of atomised AI approaches: information is released for public benefit. 

Building on this, authorities can also learn from the subjects about  which  FOI requests are frequently made, and use that to inform their proactive publication of information. Increased volume of requests represents people making use of their information rights: this should be encouraged, while trying to make the process of finding and publishing information as efficient as possible. 

Transparency isn’t a cost: it’s a necessary investment for the rewards of reduced risk of corruption, and improved quality of work through the deterrent effect of future transparency. Efforts to cut costs could instead focus on the cost of secrecy— the high legal fees government departments have paid to try and keep secret information in the public interest. Government and parliamentarians should be invested in making this system work well, for the public benefit, rather than restricting access. 

Read other responses

• George Greenwood on Relight My FOIA blog on the security arguments being made
• Jenna Corderoy from Democracy for Sale on the money the government spends fighting transparency cases
• Claire Miller discusses cost limits in her weekly FOI news roundup
• Sunday Times – Our secrecy-addicted state is at it again. It must be stopped
• The Times – Curbing our right to know would be a blow to democracy

Header image: Photo by Jr Korpa on Unsplash

Our latest TICTeC work to help improve the impacts of civic technology takes its form in a collaboration with Sitra (the Finnish Innovation Fund). Together, we are exploring the development of a proposed European Civic Tech Hub.

As part of the Democracy Shield, the European Commission has committed to creating a European Civic Tech Hub as part of boosting societal resilience, citizens’ engagement and European digital sovereignty. 

Sitra is currently investigating what this hub could look like in practice, with the aim of addressing key barriers to civic tech adoption across the EU. As part of this work, we are helping them to engage with the civic tech and democratic innovation community, gathering insights, testing ideas, and identifying what would be most valuable for practitioners.

We hope by doing this, the perspectives of civic tech and democracy practitioners will be taken into account by the European Commission when planning the Civic Tech Hub and future civic tech initiatives.  And ultimately, that citizens can engage more effectively in democracy across Europe. 

Our aim is to publish findings in a public-facing report in June 2026.

Get involved

As part of this research, we’re conducting interviews with civic tech practitioners (especially in the civic participation space) as well as deliberative democracy practitioners between mid-March and the end of April 2026. 

If you’re a civic tech or deliberative democracy practitioner and would like to share your perspective on the proposed EU Civic Tech Hub, then please get in touch by filling out this form, or emailing tictec@mysociety.org.  

Today we’re launching a new report: Shifting Landscapes: A practical guide to pro democratic tech.

This report builds on the conferences, seminars and conversations we’ve been having in our TICTeC programme over the last few years, to present a comprehensive picture of where pro democratic tech is now. We explore how technology can strengthen and defend democratic life, and how civic tech practitioners, pro-democracy organisations, and funders can make effective choices in a rapidly shifting landscape for both democracy and technology.

The result is a report of eight chapters in four thematic areas:

Pro-democracy tech: this extends our definition of pro-democracy tech, to explore how  technology can be joined to wider democratic movements working to both defend and extend democracy using technology.

Communities of practice: what we’ve learned about how we can best work together with our communities of practice around Access to Information and democratic transparency, balancing efficiencies of scale with unique circumstances and needs.

Shaping the landscape: Civic tech sometimes needs to adapt to changing times, but should be trying to shape the times. These chapters look at changing distribution methods (video and AI chatbots), but also how we can create infrastructure that makes democratic projects easier and more effective.

Using technology effectively: These chapters are aimed at practitioners thinking about how to use technology, with examples and frameworks for practical approaches to AI technologies, but also other examples of tools that can be effective in ways that AI approaches can’t. 

The report can be read online, or as a PDF. 

Header image: photo by Kalen Emsley on Unsplash