CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee Paper 6 10/09/21

CAIRNGORMS NATION­AL PARK AUTHORITY

AUDIT & RISK COMMITTEE

FOR INFORM­A­TION

Title: INFORM­A­TION REQUESTS 2020 – 21 AND QUARTER 1 2021 – 22 PER­FORM­ANCE SCORECARDS

Pre­pared by: VICKY WALK­ER, GOV­ERNANCE AND REPORT­ING MANAGER

Over­view

This paper provides an update on per­form­ance on inform­a­tion requests received under FOISA and GDPR for 2020 – 21 per­form­ance and year to date per­form­ance for 2021 – 22 at the end of quarter 1.

Inform­a­tion is provided in the form of score­cards for quarter 4 of 2020 – 21 rep­res­ent­ing the per­form­ance for fin­an­cial year 2020 – 21 and per­form­ance for the year to date at the end of quarter 1 2021 – 22.

Recom­mend­a­tions

The Audit & Risk Com­mit­tee is asked to:

a) Note per­form­ance and activ­ity to date b) Com­ment on Score­card present­a­tion and wheth­er any addi­tion­al met­rics should be included for the next report­ing cycle

Per­form­ance dur­ing 2020 – 21

1. The CNPA received a total of 37 inform­a­tion requests dur­ing 2020 – 21. Of these all except one were respon­ded to with­in stat­utory times­cales rep­res­ent­ing 97.3 per­cent of requests. The out­stand­ing request was respon­ded to 9 days over­due and was due to an admin­is­trat­ive error in record­ing mul­tiple requests from the same requester on the same day.

2. There were three requests for an intern­al review dur­ing 2020 – 21. In two of these the authority’s response was con­firmed and in one case the review par­tially con­firmed the authority’s pos­i­tion with addi­tion­al inform­a­tion being loc­ated fol­low­ing review. One of the reviews where the authority’s pos­i­tion was upheld was referred to the Scot­tish Inform­a­tion Com­mis­sion­ers Office for a review. The decision notice upheld (con­firmed) the ori­gin­al response from CNPA.

3. Dur­ing 2020 – 21 there were ten requests received from the same requester with­in a two-week peri­od, this related to a his­tor­ic plan­ning decision. Engage­ment with the requester from the Head of Plan­ning ensured the requester under­stood the inform­a­tion held by the CNPA.

Per­form­ance at Quarter 1 2021 – 22

1. The CNPA have received 12 inform­a­tion requests dur­ing the first quarter 2021 – 22. Two of these were respon­ded to out­side of stat­utory times­cales due to delays in loc­at­ing inform­a­tion when a mem­ber of staff was on leave. This rep­res­ents a response rate with­in times­cales of 83.3 percent.

2. Dur­ing the quarter 1 we have seen an increase in requests ask­ing for detailed cor­res­pond­ence between officers, board mem­bers and extern­al agen­cies. This has in part con­trib­uted to the delay on the two requests who received a response out­side of the 20 work­ing day timeframe.

3. An exemp­tion was applied to one request and inform­a­tion was partly with­held from the requester. This request was for cor­res­pond­ence which related to an ongo­ing Police investigation.

4. There was one request for an intern­al review, this was par­tially con­firmed as fur­ther inform­a­tion was found con­tained with­in a report which related to the request.

Vicky Walk­er 1^st Septem­ber 2021 vickywalker@​cairngorms.​co.​uk