An independent company is needed to deal with Freedom of Information (FOI) requests, which are taking up too much of the clerk’s time, North Tawton Town Council has said.

Councillors resolved to outsource any future FOI requests to a data protection legal firm at the latest full council meeting (January 9) in order to lessen the workload of the clerk, the council’s appointed person to deal with FOI requests.

Documents show that since May last year, the council has received 14 FOI requests, three requests to review an FOI refusal decision, four subject access requests (SARs), one complaint of a personal data breach and one complaint of a breach of subject access rights.

These requests have not incurred any additional cost to the taxpayer but have cost a total of around £1,000 in the clerk’s time.

In the document, the council explained further: “This is not a physical additional cost but is a loss of clerk’s time to carry out other business as per the clerk’s priority list of outstanding actions presented to full council every month. Whilst the clerk is carrying out this work other tasks are not completed because of the time frame to complete the requests.”

Though, the decision to outsource FOI requests will free up the clerk’s time, this will result in a cost to the taxpayer. The chosen law firm, Data Protection People Ltd, charges at least £300 (excluding VAT) for senior lawyers to spend two hours researching whether the request can be granted or not, followed by at least £50 per hour (excluding VAT) for any work needed to complete the request.

This is in addition to a resolution passed in November, which designates any FOI-related work time as additional to the clerk’s contracted hours and paid accordingly.

It will come into effect in the new financial year, starting in April, with additional work including sending any FOI requests and relevant information to the law firm researching the requests.

North Tawton councillor Christian Martin, who submitted the FOI requests, has argued that this is an unnecessary expense.

He said: “It is not the best use of taxpayers money. I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off looking at the staffing of a deputy clerk trained and qualified in handling (amongst other things) FOIs/SARs to take on the responsibility and share the workload.

“We are responsible for the clerk’s wellbeing and we need to ensure that she has not taken on too much in clerking for our town.”

Councils can spend up to £450 on each FOI request and the cost is calculated at arate of £25 per hour for each person working to complete the request.

Additional costs might be added to the calculations if it is reasonable to include them.