Our information request improvement plan

Following a Practice Recommendation from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), we continue to make improvements to the way we handle requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

We are:

• centralising the handling of requests across the Council to ensure that all information customers get the same experience from start to finish
• updating our templates so information customers understand the decisions we have made, and have decisions reviewed internally or by the ICO
• keeping the ICO updated with our performance and providing the highest quality submissions in response to cases they investigate
• introducing automation into our request management processes so that colleagues can find and extract the requested information quickly, preventing delays for information customers
• reviewing our use of case management tooling to ensure that our technology puts us in the best position to manage information customer interactions
• reviewing the information that we proactively publish to ensure that the most sought-after information is immediately available to information customers
• continuing to develop our ‘intelligent search’ function on our website so that information customers find what they are looking for as easily as possible

We still aren’t responding to requests as quickly as we’d like, however we’re committed to improving our performance to ensure we are responding to at least 90% of requests within 20 working days. The Council’s Executive Leadership Team is focussed on improving performance and are receiving regular updates to ensure we reach our targets. 

If you have feedback or suggestions on how we can improve how we handle information requests, please contact data.protection@redbridge.gov.uk. 

2026 Performance

Month	Requests Received	On-Time Requests
January	155	74%
February	218	90%
March	206	84%
April	142	82%
May	90	81%
June	193	77%