A prominent county council leader has dubbed the growing number of Freedom of Information requests as, ‘political correctness above common sense.' Hampshire CC leader, Ken Thornber, says the number of FoI requests to his council from local groups, MPs, students and the media is running at 300-350 a year, and it is becoming both disruptive and an expense. Some of the FoI requests ask for information on such details as the number of biscuits consumed on council premises (0.3p per council taxpayer a year), the amount of Fair Trade tea bags, and the cost of Christmas decorations and fireworks. Writing in The MJ this week, Cllr Thornber says: ‘When the FoI Act was introduced in 2005, I encouraged our staff to embrace it in the spirit of transparency with which it was framed. Three years on, the experience has been illuminating.' He asks whether it is right that the council must ask its ‘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 some festive streamers and mistletoe'. He adds: ‘The question 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.' He concludes that the information commissioner should arbitrate as to whether such inquiries were ‘a legitimate cost on the public purse and in the public interest'.
