On 10 August, the ICO issued Practice Recommendations to Liverpool City Council, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and the Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, and issued Enforcement Notices to the Ministry of Defence and the Environment Agency.

It is a year since the ICO published its new Freedom of Information regulatory manual, which set out its approach to more strategic enforcement of FOI in line with its statutory powers. The ICO now requires the Ministry of Defence and the Environment Agency to respond to hundreds of requests that are way overdue the legal 20-day response time – in some cases responses are years overdue.