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When is an inquiry a legitimate question and when is an inquiry a trying test of the patience of those of us working in the public sector? 

It's a question that has been much on my mind of late, as Hampshire CC's staff struggle daily to calculate the number and cost of Fair Trade tea bags that have been immersed in hot water in council premises last year – 0.2p per council taxpayer per annum – together with how much we spent on fireworks – ongoing – and Christmas decorations – less than 0.5p per person per year – across the authority.

Increasingly, I find the growing deluge of this kind of question an annoying and expensive distraction from the important work councils do to improve the quality of life of all our residents and, in particular, those who are vulnerable – the elderly, disabled or disadvantaged. 

Neither has it escaped my notice that the number of this type of question seems to increase as the date for national council elections draws near.

When the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act was introduced in January 2005, I encouraged our staff to embrace it in the spirit of openness and transparency with which it was framed.

We had nothing to hide, and wanted to reassure the public that its top-performing local authority was, indeed, giving value for money and should be, rightly, held to account, if we were not. Three years on, the experience has been illuminating.

Contrary to expectations, the initial burst of questioning has not fallen off. Our FoI requests continue to run at the rate of between 300 and 350 a year, from campaign groups, commercial companies, members of the public, degree students, MPs, councillors, political parties and, of course, the media. 

The Act has given us additional insight into the kind of things the public wants to know and, as a result, we now collect and publish most of this information as a matter of course.

It's when it comes to custard creams and Christmas decorations that I want to call a halt to our expansive replies. Do we really have to ask our carers, residential homes, Santa's grottos, country parks, and other museums and visitor attractions how much they used of their legitimate budgets to put up festive streamers and mistletoe? 

And how do we treat the packets of biscuits we sell to staff and visitors at our discovery centres, cafes and offices as we delve into the complex coding that applies to the different varieties of biscuits offered to those who attend lengthy meetings in the public interest? – 0.3p per council taxpayer per annum.

The question on my mind is whether the public sector is being asked to put political correctness above common sense as it struggles to answer some of these more ‘challenging' FoI requests in an even-handed way. 

I believe we should explain, at the outset, the lengths to which we will have to go to get the information and, if they persist, we should have the courage of our convictions and refuse to answer the inquiry. 

We should leave it to the information commissioner to adjudicate as to whether the inquiry is a legitimate cost on the public purse, and in the public interest.  
Hampshire CC has been adjudged the second-most frugal county council in the land by IsItFair, the national pressure group campaigning for the reform of council tax. I am proud that as a county, Hampshire's council tax remains in the lowest quartile, while we are one of the top councils in the land in terms of performance and quality of services. 

There's an old joke that all they do in the civil service is count paper clips.  My staff have already been paid to count tea bags and, while content to answer the vast majority of questions, I do not wish to further burden the council taxpayers of Hampshire with the cost of these spurious inquiries which, in my opinion, take the biscuit!

Ken Thornber is leader of Hampshire CC