How many Subject access requests has Devon County Council received in each of the years 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023?
| 2020 | 335 |
| 2021 | 393 |
| 2022 | 432 |
| 2023 to date | 287 |
Please note this information and the response to the further queries below is accurate as of the 20th July 2023
How many of those requests have been responded to in the time limit?
| 2020 | 122 |
| 2021 | 72 |
| 2022 | 136 |
| 2023 to date | 27 |
What are Devon County Council’s compliance rates for each of these years, broken down by month?
| January 2020 | 73% | January 2021 | 29% | January 2022 | 73% | January 2023 | 29% |
| February 2020 | 65% | February 2021 | 9% | February 2022 | 71% | February 2023 | 32% |
| March 2020 | 27% | March 2021 | 24% | March 2022 | 75% | March 2023 | 18% |
| April 2020 | 78% | April 2021 | 13% | April 2022 | 54% | April 2023 | 10% |
| May 2020 | 0% | May 2021 | 21% | May 2022 | 76% | May 2023 | 8% |
| June 2020 | 80% | June 2021 | 28% | June 2022 | 34% | June 2023 | 8% |
| July 2020 | 57% | July 2021 | 13% | July 2022 | 26% | July 2023 | 12% |
| August 2020 | 57% | August 2021 | 19% | August 2022 | 24% | August 2023 | N/A |
| September 2020 | 83% | September 2021 | 17% | September 2022 | 35% | September 2023 | NA |
| October 2020 | 42% | October 2021 | 47% | October 2022 | 53% | October 2023 | NA |
| November 2020 | 48% | November 2021 | 67% | November 2022 | 60% | November 2023 | NA |
| December 2020 | 53% | December 2021 | 64% | December 2022 | 24% | December 2023 | NA |
Does Devon have a backlog of requests?
Yes
If yes how long does Devon expect it to take to clear the backlog?
At the time of your request, the Council’s Strategic Leadership Team had agreed the following action plan to address the current backlog of information requests:
a. Recruit to existing permanent vacant 1.0 FTE post in the Access to Information Team.
b. Recruit an additional Access to Information Officer to increase the permanent resource in the team by 1 FTE.
c. Recruit an additional Access to Information Officer for a fixed term of 12 months to support the SAR backlog recovery.
d. Draft an additional 4.2 FTE additional staff from other roles in DCC until March 2024 to support the SAR backlog recovery.
e. Commission a third-party redaction service, to put in place a sustainable procurement framework to quickly mobilise redaction support externally as required.
f. Implement a wider redaction training programme across DCC staff to support future peaks in workload in the Access to Information team.
g. Targeted ‘expert’ advice and support to the Access to Information Team from the Council’s Director of Legal and Democratic Services (formerly SIRO and DPO within another Local Authority) reviewing and helping to support redaction for complex SARs and advising on high risk and complex cases.
h. Prioritising enhancements to the Access to Information Team’s FOI and SAR case management system (i-casework) to improve efficiency and reduce handling times when administering these requests. This will ultimately increase capacity within the team.
The council had hoped that this plan would clear the substantive backlog of Subject Access Requests by March 2024. However, since implementing this plan, the council has seen growth in the number of requests being received. This has necessitated a revision of our previous plan. A revised plan is currently under development and will be shared with the Information Commissioner’s Office in due course.
How many requests does it currently have?
At the time of your request the council had 182 open requests.
Has the ICO contacted Devon County Council about subject access requests, apart from individual complaints?
Yes
How many requests do you have open and how many are late?
At the time of your request the council had 182 open requests.
At the time of your request, 139 requests were late.