Council credit card 'delays' revealed

by EWAN LAMB

A 'judgement' from the Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) has disclosed a series of events which resulted in Scottish Borders Council's failure to publish details of credit card spending by its top executives during 2016 and 2017 until early this year.

The council promised as part of its policy of 'openness and transparency' to furnish its taxpayers with regular updates on credit card expenditure following a political row which erupted in 2014. John Lamont, then a local MSP, obtained details of over 1,000 transactions by SBC top brass using their plastic, and claimed the volume of use was 'staggering'.

But after disclosing lists of transactions for 2015, there was still no sign of the 2016 and 2017 statistics in December 2018 when Jedburgh council taxpayer Bill Chisholm submitted a Freedom of Information request asking for the missing sets of expenditure.

The request was refused, the council claiming it would be publishing the data for 2016, 2017 and 2018 within twelve weeks of the FOI being lodged. The entire backlog was finally released via the SBC website in February 2019.

But according to the requester there was no good reason for withholding the information for 2016 and 2017, and he asked the SIC to rule on whether the council was justified in its refusal.

In a written decision issued this week - eight months after the original FOI request was made - the SIC's Head of Enforcement Margaret Keyse says the council "correctly withheld the information".

During the SIC investigation SBC set out the reasons for not publishing the credit card transactions on time. Here is that explanation in full, as recorded in the Commissioner's decision document:

"The Council explained that the publication of the 2016 and 2017 credit card information was delayed due to changes in the roles and responsibilities of staff following a restructuring exercise within the Council. During this period of transformation, the introduction of new electronic systems and the consequent staff changes to align with that system resulted in work priority being given to other tasks, including statutory duties. As a result, the publishing task was overlooked.

"The Council provided evidence to the Commissioner that the failure to publish the information from 2016 and 2017 had been recognised and that a work stream had been set in place to solve the issue in July 2018, months prior to Mr Chisholm’s request. This was originally allocated for completion in August 2018, but was not completed and passed to another official in November 2018, again prior to Mr Chisholm’s request.

"At the time of the request, the Council considered disclosing the information, but stated that a significant amount of work was still required to collate, verify and redact the information, requiring input from several different areas of the Council to ensure the disclosure was accurate and meaningful. As the information was on track to be published by the usual date of publication in February, the Council considered it was reasonable to rely on section 27(1) of FOISA."

In her conclusions Ms Keyse states: " The Commissioner accepts that, in the circumstances of this case, it was in the public interest for the Council to be allowed the space and time to collate and check the 2016 and 2017 data to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the information before it was published.

"The Commissioner is satisfied that, on balance, the public interest in this case favoured maintaining the exemption as the public interest in disclosure was outweighed by the public interest in ensuring the data was complete and correct prior to release."

Commenting on the Commissioner's ruling, Mr Chisholm said: "This means that in November 2018 council departments were continuing to collate, verify and redact details of credit card transactions which had taken place up to three years ago.

"In that case it would seem those items of expenditure which were incurred in 2016 and 2017 cannot have been ready for presentation to the authority's external auditor when the annual accounts for those years were due for inspection.

"The reasons given for non-publication? I'll leave it to others to express opinions as to the credibility of the evidence. However, the Commissioner has decided to accept SBC's very complicated explanation for non-disclosure in what appears to have been a long-running saga".