Derby City Council Took Eight Months to Tell a Reporter It Did Not Hold the Roadworks Data She Asked For. The Regulator Found Her Request Was One of Hundreds, Some Nearly Four Years Overdue.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. On 26 August 2026 the Information Commissioner's Office served Derby City Council with an enforcement notice under section 52 of the Freedom of Information Act, the step before a council can be certified to the High Court for contempt of court [1]. The council's own figures, supplied to the regulator, showed that of requests due between 1 January and 24 July 2026, only 29 percent were answered on time and 59 percent were open and overdue [1]. A spreadsheet the council handed over listed 1,018 outstanding requests, the oldest received on 24 October 2022 [1]. The Notice ordered the council to publish an action plan within 30 days and clear the backlog within six months; the council has since published that plan [2].
What the council's own figures showed
The Information Commissioner's Office says it became aware of concerns about Derby's handling of requests after receiving information about the council's timeliness and the scale of its outstanding caseload [1]. Asked to account for it, the council supplied its own performance data: of the requests due for response between 1 January 2026 and 24 July 2026, 226 were completed on time, 29 percent of the total; 90 were completed late, 11 percent; and 463 were open and overdue, 59 percent [1]. The council also supplied a spreadsheet of individual outstanding requests, 1,018 entries recording the status, received date and statutory deadline of each one [1]. The oldest had been received on 24 October 2022, with a deadline of 21 November 2022, nearly four years before the Notice was issued [1]. Of the 1,018 listed, 662 had been waiting more than three months, 512 more than six months, and 335 more than a year [1].
The Commissioner's reading of the spreadsheet is that delay was not confined to one stage of the process. Some requests were logged as awaiting a first response; others were marked as already drafted but waiting for a senior manager to sign off before being sent, which the Notice describes as evidence of delay "at multiple points in the request-handling process, including allocation, service response, clearance and issue" [1]. The Notice records that the Commissioner has "grave concerns about the exceptional level of systemic non-compliance" the council's own figures demonstrated [1].
A request that took eight months
One of the requests behind that backlog was the Local Democracy Reporting Service's own. In December 2025 its Derby reporter asked the council how many roadworks incidents had taken place in each of the city's eighteen wards over the previous five years [3]. The statutory deadline for a response is 20 working days. The council's answer, that it did not hold the information requested, arrived on 4 September 2026, more than eight months after the request was made and more than a week after the enforcement notice itself [3].
The backlog did not end with the Notice. On 11 September 2026, three weeks after the enforcement notice, the Information Commissioner issued a separate decision notice upholding a different complaint against Derby City Council for failing to respond to a request within 20 working days, and ordered the council to respond within 30 calendar days [4]. That later notice concerns one individual request rather than the backlog as a whole, but it shows the pattern the enforcement notice was meant to fix was still producing fresh breaches within weeks of the Notice being served [1] [4].
What the Notice requires and what happens if it is not met
The enforcement notice sets two deadlines. Within 30 calendar days of 26 August, the council had to publish an action plan and a lessons-learned review on its website, covering every stage from receipt and validation through to sign-off and issue, and to name the senior officer accountable for delivering it [1]. Within six months, by 26 February 2027, the council must have resolved every request that was already overdue when the Notice was issued, either by supplying the information or by issuing a formal refusal notice under section 17 of the Act [1]. The Notice is explicit about what happens if the council does not comply: the Commissioner can certify the failure to the High Court, which may then deal with the council as if it had committed contempt of court [1]. The council had a right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal within 28 days of the Notice; this site has found no record of an appeal having been lodged.
What the council says it has done
Derby City Council has published the documents the Notice required on its own website, under a page titled Freedom of Information Improvement Plan [2]. Its formal response to the Commissioner accepts the Notice's findings without qualification: "The Council fully accepts that its recent performance in responding to Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations requests has fallen below the standards required by legislation" [5]. It names reduced capacity in the Information Governance team, recruitment difficulties, rising demand and delays getting sign-off from service departments as the causes, and says eight new posts have been recruited since May 2026, alongside further temporary cover [5]. The accompanying action plan commits to monthly backlog reporting to the council's Corporate Leadership Team, targeted work on the services with the largest backlogs, and a target of December 2026 for resolving every request that was already overdue by 31 July 2026, ahead of the Notice's own February deadline [6]. A council spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: "We accept that our performance has fallen below the required standards and we apologise to those affected. This issue stems from a shortfall in capacity alongside rising demand and a growing backlog of requests" [3].
What is still open
The council's own plan sets December 2026 as its target for clearing requests overdue as of 31 July, two months ahead of the Notice's statutory six-month deadline [6]. Neither the council's published plan nor its response to the Commissioner states how many of the 1,018 outstanding requests recorded in August have actually been closed since [5] [6]. This site has asked the council's own published Freedom of Information pages for an update and found none; it will report the council's progress against both the December target and the Notice's own 26 February 2027 deadline when the council or the Commissioner publishes it.
Sources
- Information Commissioner's Office, Enforcement Notice to Derby City Council, reference ENF0988402 (26 August 2026). https://ico.org.uk/media2/2xcfym13/derby-city-council-enenf0988402.pdf
- Derby City Council, "Freedom of Information Improvement Plan". https://www.derby.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/open-data-freedom-of-information/freedom-of-information-improvement-plan/
- Nigel Slater, Local Democracy Reporting Service, "Derby City Council faces regulator's wrath over information failures", Erewash Sound (14 September 2026). https://www.erewashsound.com/news/derby/derby-city-council-faces-regulators-wrath-over-information-failures/
- Information Commissioner's Office, Decision Notice IC-543580-Y3H4 regarding Derby City Council (11 September 2026). https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/decision-notices/2026/09/ic-543580-y3h4
- Derby City Council, "Response to ICO Enforcement Notice" (September 2026). https://www.derby.gov.uk/media/derbycitycouncil/contentassets/documents/councilanddemocracy/foi/foienforcement/dcc-response-to-ico-enforcement-action.pdf
- Derby City Council, "FOI & EIR Compliance Action Plan - September 2026 Review". https://www.derby.gov.uk/media/derbycitycouncil/contentassets/documents/councilanddemocracy/foi/foienforcement/dcc-foi-and-eir-compliance-action-plan-sept-2026-review.pdf