Freedom of Information requests can be made to any public body in Wales, and a huge amount of information can be obtained. For my Houndmistress website, the information compiled is mainly generated by a combination of viewing Council websites and by FOI requests. FOI requests are governed by a number of legal requirements set down by the Government, in particular requests must be answered within twenty working days.

I’ve done several batches of requests to all 22 Welsh Councils for statistics on stray dogs, policy on stray dog payments and revenue budgets. All of these requests have been clearly and politely made, and where possible I’ve directed them straight to the FOI Officer (where this information is clearly given on a Council’s website). All requests are made by email and specifically request information to be provided in the same way (though I provide my home address and telephone number).

Council financial years work from April to March, so by waiting until July, there should be no year end problems with figures not being compiled. As with previous FOI requests, responses have varied considerably and it is this that I wanted to highlight. For previous requests, I’ve sometimes had to wait months for basic data, and it’s not uncommon to have to escalate complaints to Chief Officer or Chief Executive level before information is provided.

There is an argument for saying that much of this information should be provided anyway on Council websites and in England, the Westminster government is encouraging Councils to be far more transparent with the publishing of financial and other information. Sadly there’s no indication of this approach to openness and transparency in Wales. With web publishing being such a relatively low cost option these days, I’m struggling to see what the problem is. I certainly wouldn’t advocate any requirement for paper based documentation.

My most recent request was to all Welsh Councils, and was made on 13^th July 2011, which means that the deadline for information to be returned is 10^th August 2011.

The text sent to all Councils is this:-

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wish to make a request for the following information under the FOI scheme.

For the financial year 2010/11, please supply :-

· The total number of stray dogs dealt with (preferably broken down by month, if possible)

Of these, please enumerate which are : Returned directly to owner, of those kennelled, those collected by the owner, those rehomed, those put down, and any other destinations.

Please enumerate any puppies born in kennels.

· What is the total revenue budget for the stray dog service for the financial year 2010/11 and for 2011/12? Has the service had to undergo any service restrictions in light of the current financial climate?

· Are stray dog kennelling services provided in house or by a contractor?

· If services are in house, has any market testing been done in the past three years or are there plans to undertake any?

· If services are provided by a contractor, when are they due for renewal?

Thank you for this information. I’d be grateful if you could acknowledge receipt of this email. Please reply by email and do not hesitate to contact me if you require any further clarification.

If some information can be provided quickly, I am happy to receive it in advance of the full response.

Mrs. K Woodhouse

The only thing I’ve removed from the above is my address at the top and the date.

I’ve put together a table which shows the responses I’ve had so far.

Name of Council	Acknowledgement received	Information received within 20 day deadline	Information all provided and correct
Anglesey	Yes	Yes	No, minor clarifications received very promptly on 19.7.11.
Blaenau Gwent	Yes	Yes	No – previous year’s figures initially sent.
Bridgend	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 9.8.11.
Caerphilly	Yes	Yes	Yes, in paper form, though asked for electronic delivery.
Cardiff	No	No	Partial answer received on 23rd August, still waiting on remainder of information.
Carmarthenshire	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 10.8.11.
Ceredigion	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 26.7.11.
Conwy	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 29.7.11.
Denbighshire	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 27.7.11.
Flintshire	Yes	Yes	Partial answer sent on 25.7.11. Clarification sent on 26.7.11.
Gwynedd	Yes.	Yes.	No - still waiting on 29.8.11.
Merthyr Tydfil	Yes	Yes	No – 2008/9 figures provided. Had to be chased to provide correction.
Monmouthshire	Yes	Yes	Sent in two tranches on 22nd and 24th August.
Neath Port Talbot	Yes	Yes	Initial information sent on 15.7.11 – completed information received on 23.7.11. after queries
Newport	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 10.8.11.
Pembrokeshire	Yes	Yes	Partial info received on 10.8.11. Clarification received on 11.8.11.
Powys	Yes	Yes	Yes – on 4.8.11.
Rhondda Cynon Taff	Yes	Yes	Partial info received on 4.8.11, and clarification received on 15.8.11.
Swansea	Yes	Yes	Yes on 27.7.11. with a minor clarification received on 11.8.11.
Torfaen	Yes	Yes	Yes, on 26.7.11.
Vale of Glamorgan	Yes	Yes	Yes, on 10.8.11.
Wrexham	Yes	Yes	Partial info sent on 29.7.11. and fully corrected info on 1.8.11.

Only ten Councils were able to provide the information requested in the correct form within the deadline – that’s 45.45%. Is it just me or is that a shocking indictment of the sloppy way Welsh local government manages its correspondence, and the low regard it has for its customers?

A further ten sent information within the deadline, but answers were incomplete or just plain wrong. For example, both Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr Tydfil sent figures for previous years rather than the one requested. If I hadn’t already had the previous figures to compare with, and had carefully checked each answer as it arrived, I would never have known these figures were wrong. Merthyr didn’t even apologise when they sent out the corrected figures, and had to be chased to provide them.

I am also utterly baffled by Caerphilly’s determination to send out paper based communication when I had specifically requested an email response. More worryingly, a letter will incur printing and postage costs that an email will not.

Most worrying of all, is that at the time of writing, I am still waiting for a partial answer from Cardiff Council and haven’t received ANY information from Gwynedd. Gwynedd explained the delay when it was queried by saying that their officers have been on holiday for the past two months. I swear I am not making this up – I really couldn’t be that brazen to fulfil every cliché about the slowness of Councils. I escalated my Gwynedd complaint to the Chief Executive of the Council last week. You probably won’t be surprised to know that Harry Thomas was away on holiday, so his charming PA valiantly sent me a very polite apology and told me that the Head of Environmental Health would be looking into the matter. I’m still waiting for this mythical beast to contact me – presumably he also is enjoying a lengthy summer break.

And let’s not forget what we’re dealing with here – nothing complex, no lengthy trawls through historical archives. Just simple figures on the dogs dealt with last year, and how much money they spend while doing it. These should be used by every service manager on a regular basis, assessing trends, monitoring hotspots, driving efficiencies. The fact that these figures are so difficult to come by suggests that they are not being used by service managers.

And in the bigger picture, Wales is poised later this year to produce legislation on breeding dogs which will almost certainly push microchipping as part of the planned programme. Issues around stray dogs and their management are timely, and Councils themselves should be looking at these figures to assess the impact of legislative changes. That’s exactly why I’m chasing the numbers, so I can run some assessments and forecasts on an all Wales basis. You might even reasonably expect that Welsh local Councils would share this level of data with each other –again, looking at legislative impacts and being prepared. That’s a reasonable expectation but unfortunately it’s wrong. No such sharing is taking place, and not even WG are looking at this detail in the data.