Council refuses to divulge how many taxi drivers have serious convictions

Rochdale Borough Council

Rochdale Borough Council has refused to divulge how many local taxi drivers had been convicted of a serious criminal offence at the time of application for a licence.

In its response to a Freedom of Information request, the Council says it would take too long to search "approximately 1,600 files", claiming it would take 186 hours, well above the statutory limit of 18 hours provided in the Freedom of Information Act.

The refusal is based on the council claiming that it would require searching through 1,600 hard copies. 

The council response goes on to explain an astonishing lack of organisation:

'The files vary in size. Some of the files are relatively slim, but others are extremely detailed. If a driver has been licensed fairly recently and therefore the files do not contain much information, there can still be up to at least 40 sheets of paper in the file. However, if it is an extremely detailed file, there can be hundreds and hundreds sheets of paper in each file.  

'There are no sections/categories within the files with different types of documents being in mixed order. The file not only contains a range of documents submitted by the driver but also includes documents generated by the Licensing Section.'

It is also quite surprising that in 2018 such records are not computerised - whereby a simple search query of a database would take minutes - and hence clarification was sought, 'are taxi driver records not computerised'?

Rather than answering the request for clarification with a simple yes or no, the Council decided the clarification request should be treated as a new Freedom of Information request giving it a further 20 working days to say yes or no!