Bedford Borough Council is facing growing pressure in responding to Freedom of Information (FOI) and Subject Access Requests (SARs), with councillors warned that the use of artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT is making requests more complex.
The issue was discussed at the council’s Budget and Corporate Services Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Thursday (12 March).
Anna Robbani, head of housing, homelessness and customer services, told the Committee that the council is receiving a higher number of SARs and that many information requests are becoming more detailed.
“We are also seeing customers using ChatGPT and Copilot to develop FOIs or requests with more complexity and more cross-cutting issues across different departments,” she said.
“There is a capacity challenge, obviously, within each directorate.”
The council’s performance report showed 85.4 per cent of FOIs and environmental information requests were responded to within the statutory time limit, with an average turnaround time of 16 days.
For the current financial year, 87 per cent of SARs have been responded to within the statutory time limit.
Ms Robbani said that by the third quarter of the financial year, the council had received 155 SAR requests, already exceeding the total for the previous year.
She added that responding to requests often requires information gathering from multiple departments.
by John Guinn
Local Democracy Reporter
