Freedom of Information was designed to provide timely transparency. The law requires public authorities to respond to requests within 20 working days.
If the response is disputed, a requester can seek an internal review. This should occur within a further 20 working days, it appears 40 days is allowed.
If that fails, the complaint goes to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) — the regulator responsible for enforcing the law. In theory, the system works like this:
FOIA request
↓
20 working days
↓
Internal review
↓
ICO investigation
In practice, something very different appears to be happening.
A regulator struggling to keep up
The ICO has recently indicated that new Freedom of Information complaints may take around 40 weeks to be assigned to a case officer. That means the regulator may not even begin examining a complaint until close to a year after the original request.
The ICO itself acknowledged the emerging problem in its Performance and Impact Report Q1 2025/26, stating:
- “The time to allocate a case increased during 2024/25 from 9 weeks at the start of the year to 16 weeks by year-end and will continue to worsen if intake continues at its present rate.”
This wording deserves attention. The report describes a 7-week increase across an entire year. Yet current indications suggest allocation delays may now be around 40 weeks. In other words, the problem may not merely be continuing – it may be accelerating.
What happens when transparency arrives too late?
Freedom of Information often concerns matters that are relevant right now:
- public spending decisions
- policing practices
- government contracts
- operational policies
Information released a year later may still technically be disclosed. But its value to public scrutiny may be significantly reduced.
Transparency delayed can quickly become transparency diluted.
A troubling structural incentive
Delays of this scale also create a subtle but important incentive. If a public authority refuses a request, it knows that:
- an internal review may take weeks
- regulatory scrutiny may take months
Simply maintaining a refusal may defer external scrutiny for a very long time. This is unlikely to be what Parliament intended when it created the Freedom of Information Act.
The transparency paradox
There is also an irony. While Freedom of Information is designed to increase transparency, the operational functioning of FoIA enforcement itself is not particularly transparent. For example, it is often difficult for requesters to obtain information about:
- the size of the complaint backlog
- the age profile of cases awaiting allocation
- staffing resources dedicated to FOIA work
Some interactions between the ICO and public authorities are protected by statutory confidentiality provisions, which further limits visibility.
Automation, AI and the search for solutions
The ICO says it is exploring technological solutions. The same report states:
“We continue to explore automation and new AI opportunities to support performance and offset this impact as much as possible.”
It also refers to the creation of a “FOI Continuous Improvement initiative”. These are welcome developments in principle. However, reasonable questions remain:
- Have these technologies actually been implemented?
- What has been the cost of developing or procuring them?
- What improvement in complaint handling was expected?
- What improvement has actually been achieved?
When does delay become unacceptable?
Ultimately this issue raises a simple but important question.
If a public authority breaches the 20-day statutory deadline, it is breaking the law. But if the regulator responsible for enforcing that law takes a year to begin examining the breach, the effectiveness of the enforcement system inevitably comes into question.
- At what point does delay reach a level where the right itself becomes difficult to exercise?
Or, to put the question more bluntly:
- At what stage does the system simply throw in the towel?
A trajectory worth watching
Using publicly reported figures of 9 weeks, 16 weeks, and now roughly 40 weeks — it is possible to plot a simple trajectory. If the current trend continues, allocation delays could exceed one year by the end of 2026.
That projection may or may not materialise. But the trajectory itself is concerning enough to warrant attention.
A moment for scrutiny
This is not an attack on the ICO. The organisation performs a difficult role with wide responsibilities, including data protection enforcement across both public and private sectors. But Freedom of Information is one of the core transparency safeguards created by Parliament.
If the enforcement mechanism becomes too slow, the law itself risks becoming less effective.
That is not a problem for the ICO alone. It is a question for Parliament, regulators, and the public.
The purpose of Freedom of Information is simple – to ensure that public authorities remain accountable to the public they serve.