Campaign to improve access to information held by partnerships of public sector bodies

[RichardTaylor]

Issue Many prominent bodies with key public roles may not really exist, they might not be considered to be a legal entity / body corporate for the purposes of FOI law. Obtaining information held by these bodies can be challenging, individual members might claim not to hold the information, and the bodies themselves may claim not to exist.

Sets of bodies this might impact

• Local Safeguarding Children Partnerships
• Safer roads, or safety camera, partnerships
• Local Resilience Fora

Historic bodies this issue may have impacted:

• NHS Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships

Relevant body tags

• https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/list/denies_existing

Scotland This might not be an issue in Scotland where partnerships are legal entities.

ICO guidance

para 32 https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/2614663/information-held-by-a-public-authority-for-purposes-of-eir.pdf repeated at para 34 https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1148/information_held_by_a_public_authority_for_purposes_of_foia.pdf

Potential positives If the right to access information held by a partnership does not rely on all members being public bodies, this means partnerships cannot be "poisoned" and taken out of the scope of FOI by the presence of members which are not public bodies.

Actions

• Continue to list relevant "bodies"
• Provide advice to users on relevant body pages on WhatDoTheyKnow (need to decide on an approach)
  • List just like any other body?
  • List but suggest users make requests to a partner which is clearly subject to access to information law?
  • List with advice and let requesters decide which approach to take
• Collect examples of cases where this issue caused a problem.

[garethrees]

Linking back to note on this topic https://github.com/mysociety/whatdotheyknow-theme/issues/1243#issuecomment-1284431419

[RichardTaylor]

There's a recent relevant ICO decision notice (from November 2022) requiring a council to provide information which they suggested was only held by the Safeguarding Adults Board, and not by the council, even though the council was a member of the board:

https://ico.org.uk/media/action-weve-taken/decision-notices/2022/4022789/ic-174594-n0n9.pdf

While the decision was in favour of the release of material in this case, it relies on the council having a reason to hold the material "for its own purposes". It actually I think shows the need to make these partnership bodies subject to FOI. It does also though provide a route for requesters to get some information relating to these bodies now.

[RichardTaylor]

Noting a new type of partnership we've come across, medical schools run by multiple universities eg.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/bsms

[RichardTaylor]

While this ticket is linked to the proposed blog on ICPs / ICBs, just to explicitly note that Integrated Care Partnerships are a class of "body" to which this ticket may relate:

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/body/list/icp

[RichardTaylor]

From call discussion:

It's unlikely those drafting legislation will be keen on a non legal entity being made subject to FOI.

This might be one for the ICO to solve via guidance. eg. suggesting that partnerships identify a "lead partner to deal with FOI requests" and perhaps advise that they should not argue they don't hold information on the grounds the partnership do, but they don't.

[Do the ICO actually already have this guidance somewhere deep on their website?]

Another resolution might be to encourage legislators and government not to give civic responsibilities to partnerships.