South Ayrshire Council silence over information request

Mar 6 2009 by Lisa Boyle

COUNCIL chiefs have failed to go public with consultants’ reports costing £250,000 of taxpayers money.

The Ayrshire Post has been forced to seek legal advice after their request for copies of the documents was ignored.

The move comes after South Ayrshire Council breached their obligations under the Freedom of Information Act.

We submitted two requests to freedom of information officers about the Gaiety Theatre on January 23 this year.

The first asked for cost details for consultants which have been employed in relation to the theatre over the last three years.

And the second asked for any reports produced by consultants in the last three years.

Under the terms of the act, South Ayrshire Council have 20 working days to respond to our request.

On February 19 – the deadline date – we received full disclosure from the council about the consultants costs.

But they failed to respond to our other request.

Over the next few days our reporter made several phone calls to freedom of information officers asking when we would receive the information which was already overdue.

But we were told it was in the hands of the relevant department who hold the information.

Last Friday we consulted our own lawyers and the Scottish information commissioner about what to do next.

We have since written to South Ayrshire Council requesting a review into their decision not to respond to our request.

They have 20 working days to provide us with the results of that review.

If they fail to do so, Kevin Dunion, the information commissioner will launch an investigation into South Ayrshire Council’s procedure.

When the Post went to press we had not received an acknowledgement of our request for a review or the information we originally asked for.