Hertfordshire County Council has refused a request for information about the number of times it has “acted unlawfully” – because it would take staff too long.

A Hertfordshire resident requested data on any breaches of statutory legislation, under the Freedom of Information Act.

And they asked on how many occasions the authority had “acted unlawfully”, to be broken down by legislation and/or department.

But within a week the request for the data was refused – with the response pointing to the time and cost that the response would require.

placeholder image — Hertfordshire County Council

That response points to the requirement of the council to follow “a multitude of laws which effect all parts of the councils everyday work” – including those relating to children services, adult care, highways, health and safety, human resources, Freedom of Information and “many more”.

And it says the request had been formulated in too general a manner – and would require an assessment of records in all parts of the organisation.

It suggests the request is likely to involve a significant amount of staff time – likely to exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours and the cost of £450.

And it says the request is being refused under S12 of the Freedom of Information Act.

However it does suggest that if the resident could “reduce or refine” the request to specific legislation.

When approached by the Local Democracy Reporting Service, a spokesperson for the county council said: “The council welcomes Freedom of Information requests and deals with large numbers of requests every year.

“However, when a request is so broad that to respond would take a disproportionate amount of time and generate costs for the council, we must occasionally issue a refusal notice.

“In this instance, to obtain the information requested would have diverted officers for a substantial period as they sought information from every service.

“When issuing the refusal notice, we did seek to assist the requestor by asking them to narrow the scope of their information request and if resubmitted we will assess the request and work to provide the information required within the scope of the legislation.”

The spokesperson told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that details of where the council had been judged to have acted unlawfully were held locally by individual services within the council.

And they said that due to the sheer number of legal obligations and duties placed upon the council, it would not be cost effective to create a central database and to allocate staff to ensure that it remained up to date.