NORTH Yorkshire Police is the second worst-performing force in the whole country at dealing with information requests, according to new figures obtained by The Press.

An investigation by this newspaper has found that only one force in England has such a poor record at complying with the time limit on Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.

The law says public bodies must respond to applications for information within 20 working days, but earlier this year we revealed that North Yorkshire Police (NYP) had hit that target on only 43.2 per cent of the requests it handled between April and October.

The Press has now obtained the equivalent figure from 37 of the 38 other forces in England. Only Dorset, with a 24.6 per cent compliance rate, had a worse record than North Yorkshire, and only two other forces (Cumbria with 46.3 per cent and Warwickshire with 46.8 per cent) joined North Yorkshire and Dorset below 50 per cent.

In total, 28 of the forces had figures of 85 per cent or higher and 14 of those topped 95 per cent.

West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Humberside all complied with the 20-day limit in more than 90 per cent of cases. Only Hampshire Constabulary did not provide the figures.

The Freedom of Information Act, which became law seven years ago tomorrow, allows members of the public to access information held by public authorities and places a legal obligation on the authority to comply, barring some exceptions.

Simon Dennis, North Yorkshire Police’s director of legal and compliance services, said the force had a small Freedom of Information team that was working “exceptionally hard”, and said the oldest cases were being prioritised where appropriate.

He said that the force’s latest stats showed that since April 7, 330 out of 548 requests had been completed, but said 181 of the remaining 218 cases were overdue.

He said: “In the current financial climate, the force’s resources must be concentrated upon maintaining front line policing services.

“We are, of course, committed to being open and transparent, so as well as working hard to answer FOI requests as quickly as we can, we are working towards publishing more and more information on our website, which will keep the public fully informed about NYP and perhaps answer more questions without formal requests needing to be made.” Figures for the percentage of completed FOI requests that were answered within the legal 20-day deadline (April to October):

Avon and Somerset (100%), Bedfordshire (98.7%), Cambridgeshire (98.3%), Cheshire (99.7%), City of London (89.4%), Cleveland (75.1%), Cumbria (46.3%), Derbyshire (100%), Devon and Cornwall (89.4%), Dorset (24.6%), Durham (98.1%), Essex (78.7%), Gloucestershire (96.4%), Greater Manchester (85.6%), Hampshire (no response), Hertfordshire (89.1%), Humberside (90.3%), Kent (97.9%), Lancashire (90.4%), Leicestershire (81.1%), Lincolnshire (92.5%), Merseyside (88.1%), Metropolitan (84.3%), Norfolk (86.4%), Northamptonshire (92.9%), Northumbria (99%), North Yorkshire (43.2%), Nottinghamshire (92.8%), South Yorkshire (90.9%), Staffordshire (87.8%), Suffolk (99.7%), Surrey (95.4%), Sussex (91.8%), Thames Valley (98.6%), Warwickshire (46.8%), West Mercia (97.5%), West Midlands (69%), West Yorkshire (96.7%), Wiltshire (76.6%).