To receive any public questions, statements or petitions submitted in accordance with the Constitution. Further information on the requirements for submitting these is available to view at the following link:-
https://democracy.bcpcouncil.gov.uk/ieListMeetings.aspx?CommitteeID=151&Info=1&bcr=1
The deadline for the submission of public questions is 3 clear working days before the meeting.
The deadline for the submission of a statement is midday the working day before the meeting.
The deadline for the submission of a petition is 10 working days before the meeting.
Minutes:
There were 4 public questions received and 3 public statements as follows:
Mr Alex McKinstry, in relation to agenda item 6 and 2 questions from Mr Ian Redman (being read by Mr McKinstry), in relation to agenda items 9 and 6.
Public Questions from Mr Alex McKinstry
Response from the Chair:
There were 1458 FOI/EIR requests processed in 2023/24, of these none were refused under S14 (vexatious).
There were 2 requests dealt with under an internal review where S14 was applied after further consideration.
There were no reclassifications overturning the S14 decisions to the internal review responses.
Response from the Chair:
9 responses to internal reviews were not made within the ICO response guideline of 20 working days.
Of these 9 responses, 8 were met within 40 days (including a 20 working day permitted extension for complex requests, consultation with third parties or where a substantial amount of information is requested)
Public Questions from Mr Ian Redman
Response from the Chairman:
The actual Internal Audit recommendation reads :
‘R8 - Formal consideration should be given to aggregating activities into larger packages where possible and appropriate to do so to increase the number of potential providers and potentially offer better value for money for the Council through greater competition’.
The key words in this recommendation are ‘consider’ and ‘where possible and appropriate’, the recommendation does not imply that all activities should be aggregated.
There is a fine balance to strike, Mr Redman is quite right that in certain situations larger packages of activity may prevent smaller businesses from taking part in tendering or providing quotes, thus reducing competition and providing less choice for consumers.
Conversely however in certain situations, if activity packages are too small, this can put off certain suppliers from making the effort to tender or to supply quotes as any eventual return on this effort and on fixed costs incurred is considered insufficient reward. This is simple economies of scale.
Aggregation of activity into large tender opportunity packages can therefore, in certain appropriate situations, be beneficial to both overall value for money and increase competition.
Response:
IG measure the quality of FOI responses through the data recorded for internal reviews. This provides an indication of customer satisfaction through the quality of the first response.
Table 1 shows that 1458 requests were processed during 2023/24.
Table 9 shows that the authority received 38 requests for an internal review during 2023/24.
From this data we calculate that 97% of applicants were satisfied with the 1st response and 3% were not satisfied and requested an internal review.
We use the data recorded from internal reviews to identify weaknesses and to help improve performance.
The current system does not provide an audit of emails associated with each request – we know that 97% of requestors are satisfied with the first response requiring an average of two emails. Where excessive numbers of emails are received associated to one request, placing a burden on resources, this will be referred to the IG team to investigate.
The current system does not provide the ability to publish a Disclosure log – this would be function sought in any new system in the future.
Public Statements
There were two public statements from Mr Gatrell read out by Democratic Services Officer as follows and one statement from Mr McKinstry which he read out.