Red tape set to rise for charities delivering public sector contracts
March 2008
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 has been in force since January 2005 and makes provision for the disclosure of information held by public authorities.
This applies to over 100,000 public authorities. At present, charities that contract to provide service to public authorities are not covered by the Act. However, s.5 of the Act included a provision to extend coverage to them by making what is termed as a ‘section 5 order’.
The Ministry of Justice published its consultation paper, Freedom of Information Act 2000: Designation of additional public authorities on 25 October 2007 and this closed on 1 February 2008. Charities delivering public services on behalf of government are already accountable to the public authority via their service delivery contract. It is likely that these charities are already providing all the information necessary for an FOI request and it is for this reason that Charity Finance Directors’ Group, Acevo, the NCVO and the Wales Council for Voluntary Action have opposed the plans in their consultation responses.
Hazel Grant, a partner at the law firm Bird & Bird LLP explained to Caritas magazine ‘The consultation which has just ended is the start of a process. If the Government decides to expand the coverage of the FOI Act (which seems likely), then there will need to be a further round of consultation with the organisations which it is planned to bring within scope of FOI Act.
‘If any charities are brought within the scope of FOI Act, then they will need to train up and retain sufficient staff to answer FOI requests, usually within 20 working days of receipt. The burden varies greatly between organisations and over time (if there is a lot of public interest, because of a perceived scandal or change in policy say then the number of FOI requests will increase greatly and so will the burden). There will also need to be input from the charities' management, to carry out internal reviews of complaints and make decisions on some of the exemptions which may be relied upon to withhold information. All staff within the charities affected will need to be able to recognise and act upon a FOI request, which can be difficult since there is no requirement on requesters to label a request as a FOI request. The impact is manageable with sufficient time for implementation and good planning and communication with the organisation’, she concluded.
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