London Borough of Lewisham Council has been issued with an enforcement notice after failing to respond to hundreds of overdue freedom of information (FOI) requests.

At the end of 2022, the council had a total number of 338 overdue requests for information, 221 of which were over a year old, according to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).

The oldest unanswered request was submitted over two years ago on 3 December 2020.

The ICO said that the council neglected to tackle the backlog of requests because it was focusing on new requests to improve its compliance with the statutory time limit of 20 working days for a response.

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.’

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.

The council 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.

A spokesperson for the council 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.'