Delays in Right of Access Request(RoAR) processing

Freedom of information request reference no: 01.FOI.21.022333

I note you seek access to the following information:

What measures have you put in place and outlined to the ICO re delays in ROA processing?

Decision

I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in full.

Please find below information pursuant to your request above.

This information was communicated to the Information Commissioner’s Office in September 2021.

“The MPS has seen an explosive growth in Right of Access requests since 2018. The MPS set 2019 as its baseline year on which staffing was modelled. A significant investment was made which saw substantial resourcing growth with 34 caseworker posts being dedicated solely to this area, together with allied supervision. That modelling was in our view, somewhat generous. 2020 however saw a further rise in case numbers of 32% and this year to date there has been an additional 36% over 2020. Our projections suggest that the full year rise over our 2019 baseline may be between 68% and 106%. Although beyond simple quantification, there has been a consistent trend towards increased complexity adding to the impact of the rise.

In the case of FOIA, this year we are experiencing a 14% demand rise over the previous year. This however appears to be within the bounds of annual variation and would not ordinarily warrant much comment. Whilst the FOIA and ROA teams are largely independent, there has been a pressure on FOIA performance as a result of the increased pressure on the single point of entry – the Triage team. This team is multi skilled and provides responses to the simple cases where they can be dealt with swiftly.

Currently there are 10 vacancies in the information/subject rights business area. A recruitment campaign earlier in the year failed to produce sufficient candidates of suitable calibre. We are however now in a position of selecting staff from a second campaign and are confident that all vacancies will be filled. It does however take substantial time to on-board new staff (vetting etc.) and thereafter a period of training before some degree of useful productivity is achieved. A review of the full staffing requirement is currently being undertaken albeit in the short term two additional staff are to be recruited into this work area. Overtime is consistently being deployed, together with the use of agency workers to offset our position. It should be noted that whilst agency staff are a useful asset, where these individuals are not skilled, they present many of the same issues associated with on-boarding permanent staff.

We are ensuring that our customers understand our current challenges. As you know we publish our performance externally and we also ensure that our initial contacts with the public and all update communications provide a sense of our current challenge. We have also added a message to our external facing website to help users understand the situation and alternative routes to obtaining some kinds of information.

Whilst I have highlighted the demand challenge, we have as you know been working on delivering efficiencies within our processes over the last two years. This includes for example the implementation of the triage team; better video redaction software; and, we have been actively reviewing state of the art text redaction tooling which we believe will make the present process much swifter. At a more strategic level we are reviewing Data Protection Impact Assessments to ensure that rights are properly considered. By that I mean, where it is obvious that the public will have an interest in a work area, that where practicable, performance data and other relevant information is published to join the suite of external facing dashboards already in place. Similarly for ROA, that measures are put in place to anticipate and adequately resource new demand. This may also lead to the provision of some information proactively and without the need for application where this would be beneficial. I have personally spoken with practitioners within all peer forces over the last 10 months, looking to identify and implement transferable best practice, and later in the month shall be attending the ICO workshop where I hope it will be possible again to look for and to share what works well.

Oversight of current MPS performance is held at Data Board, representing the organisation’s most senior management level. Currently, compliance across both ROA and FOIA is at around 70% which neither meets our ambition, nor what we know the public should expect of us. We are as I have highlighted, responding to this. It is inevitable that there will be a period of performance consolidation in the near term, however as new staff begin to join towards the latter part of the year we would anticipate seeing the beginning of more solid improvement. We are committed to making sustained improvement and will continue to engage and keep you fully abreast of developments.”