A reporter asked Derby City Council about roadworks in December 2025. Eight months later the council admitted it never held the answer, one of 1,018 Freedom of Information requests still open when the regulator intervened.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. The Information Commissioner served Derby City Council an Enforcement Notice on 26 August 2026 under section 52 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, citing continuing breaches of sections 1(1) and 10(1) (page 1) [1]. The Notice's headline figure is that 59 per cent of requests due between 1 January and 24 July 2026 were open and overdue (page 4) [1]. The council's own spreadsheet behind that figure lists 1,018 outstanding requests in total, 335 of them more than a year old, the oldest received on 24 October 2022 (page 4) [1]. Four documented mistakes: three stars.
In December 2025 the Local Democracy Reporting Service asked Derby City Council how many roadworks incidents had taken place in each of the city's 18 wards over the previous five years. The answer came back on 4 September 2026, more than eight months later: the council did not hold the information requested [3]. That single case sits inside a much larger pattern the Information Commissioner's Office had already found and acted on three weeks earlier, when it served the council an Enforcement Notice over what it called an "exceptional level of systemic non-compliance" with the Freedom of Information Act (page 6) [1].
The number behind the number
The Notice's central evidence is a performance snapshot: of requests due between 1 January and 24 July 2026, 226 were completed on time (29 per cent), 90 were completed late (11 per cent) and 463 were still open and overdue (59 per cent) (page 4) [1]. That is the figure the Commissioner's finding of "exceptional" non-compliance rests on (page 6) [1], and it is also the smallest and most recent slice of the problem. The council's own spreadsheet of outstanding requests, also supplied to the Commissioner, runs to 1,018 entries. Of those, 662 had been open for more than three months, 512 for more than six months, and 335 for more than a year, measured against a reference date of 27 July 2026 (page 4) [1]. The single oldest entry on the spreadsheet was received on 24 October 2022, with a statutory deadline of 21 November 2022 (page 4) [1]: a request nearly four years overdue at the date of the Notice, from a cohort the 59 per cent figure never reaches.
A target for the backlog, none for what comes after
Annex 1 sets two deadlines. Within 30 days, the council must publish an action plan, covering everything from how requests are logged to how responses are signed off, and identify to the Commissioner the senior officer accountable for delivering it. Within six months, it must resolve every request that is already outside the 20-working-day statutory limit as at the date of the Notice, either by answering it or issuing a formal refusal (page 10) [1]. Both steps are specific and dated. What is missing is any figure for what happens once that backlog is cleared. The Commissioner separately states that the council must "ensure that future requests are handled in accordance with the council's obligations" under the Act (page 6) [1], but no ongoing compliance rate, no monitoring period and no reporting date attach to that sentence anywhere in the ten-page Notice. A council that clears its backlog on schedule and immediately lets a new one build has met every term Annex 1 sets out.
The "senior officer accountable for delivery" is also never named in the Notice itself, only identified privately to the Commissioner (page 10) [1]. The thousands of people with a request sitting in that spreadsheet have no way of knowing who that officer is.
Part of a pattern with no public scorecard
Derby is not an isolated case. In December 2025 the ICO published a roundup of FOI enforcement action that already included Enfield Council, ordered to log all backlogged requests within three months and clear them within six; Cambridge Hospitals NHS Trust, found to be answering only 14 to 50 per cent of requests on time with 67 of 222 open requests over a year old; and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Trust, found to be responding on time in just 34 per cent of cases [4]. The template is the same one applied to Derby: an action plan, a backlog deadline, and the Act's single formal sanction, certification to the High Court for contempt of court, held in reserve for later (page 2) [1]. The ICO's own public record does not show whether Enfield or Cambridge Hospitals met their deadlines. This site's reporting on a second Enforcement Notice against Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust found that the Commissioner had already weighed that same contempt sanction against a different public authority that missed its own enforcement deadline, and chosen not to use it. The lever exists. Nothing in the public record shows it being pulled.
The claims, tested
| The notice's own words | What the record shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| "Exceptional level of systemic non-compliance" rests on 59 per cent of requests overdue in the January-July 2026 cohort (page 6) [1] | The same evidence shows 1,018 total open requests, 335 over a year old, the oldest from October 2022 (page 4) [1] | The headline figure is drawn from the newest, smallest slice of a nearly four-year-old backlog |
| Council must "ensure future requests are handled in accordance with" the Act (page 6) [1] | Annex 1 sets no ongoing compliance rate, monitoring period or reporting date, only a one-off backlog clearance (page 10) [1] | An outcome is required with no number set to measure it by |
| Council must "identify the senior officer accountable for delivery of the plan" (page 10) [1] | That identification goes to the Commissioner only; the Notice does not require the officer's name or role to be published | Accountability runs to the regulator, not to the people waiting on requests |
| Non-compliance with an Enforcement Notice can be certified to the High Court as contempt of court (page 2) [1], the deterrent behind this and at least three sibling notices since December 2025 [4] | No public ICO record confirms any of those sibling authorities met their deadlines, and this site's reporting on Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust found the Commissioner had already considered that sanction elsewhere and declined to use it | The Act's one real lever has no demonstrated record of being pulled |
Credit where due
The Commissioner records that the council "engaged constructively" and had already identified the causes of its backlog before the Notice was served (page 7) [1]. Derby City Council did not dispute the Commissioner's findings. A council spokesperson apologised directly, attributing the backlog to "a shortfall in capacity alongside rising demand," and said an Improvement Action Plan, with extra resources and senior leadership oversight, was already under way before the ICO's intervention [3]. None of that is in dispute here.
Verdict
Three stars, from four documented mistakes. A council that let a Freedom of Information request sit unanswered for nearly four years, and then told the person who waited eight months for a different one that it never held the answer, has a problem the Notice's own 59 per cent headline figure does not fully capture. The remedy Annex 1 sets out is real and dated for the existing backlog. It has nothing to say about what stops the next one forming, and no public record yet shows the ICO's one legal sanction for a missed deadline being used against anyone.
The star score counts four documented mistakes: the Notice's "exceptional non-compliance" finding is built on a 59 per cent figure covering only the newest cohort of requests, while the council's own spreadsheet behind it holds 1,018 open requests, 335 of them over a year old and one nearly four years overdue; Annex 1 sets a deadline for clearing the existing backlog but no ongoing compliance-rate target for requests after that; the "senior officer accountable for delivery" is identified to the Commissioner only, never published; and the Act's sole formal sanction for a missed Enforcement Notice, High Court contempt certification, has no publicly confirmed instance of being used, including in a comparable case this site has reported on directly. Four falls in the 4 to 9 band: three stars; the bands are on the ratings page. This piece makes no finding against the accuracy of the performance figures or the statutory framework the Notice sets out, which are detailed and internally consistent; the finding is narrower, that the Notice's own framing understates the scale of the backlog behind it and sets no lasting target once that backlog clears. Checked directly against the ten-page Enforcement Notice PDF (full text), the ICO's own December 2025 enforcement roundup and the Local Democracy Reporting Service's reporting, all fetched 4 October 2026.
Sources
- Enforcement Notice: Derby City Council (PDF), reference ENF0988402, Information Commissioner's Office, dated 26 August 2026
- Derby City Council, Information Commissioner's Office, FOI regulatory action page
- Derby City Council faces regulator's wrath over information failures, Erewash Sound (Local Democracy Reporting Service), 14 September 2026
- Regulator holds public bodies to account by cracking down on FOI failures, Information Commissioner's Office, 3 December 2025