KCC faces transparency questions after damning ICO ruling

KCC faces transparency questions after damning ICO ruling

Kent County Council has been ordered by the Information Commissioner to carry out fresh searches for records relating to a string of cancelled committee meetings, after the regulator found the council had failed to demonstrate that the information did not exist.

The ruling is awkward enough on its own. It concerns the cancellation or postponement of several formal KCC meetings in the weeks after the May 2025 county council elections, including scrutiny, audit, planning and cabinet committee sessions.

But the decision notice becomes more damaging because of what it says about KCC’s handling of the request. The council told the requester at internal review that searches had been carried out. It later told the Information Commissioner that no searches had been undertaken at all. The Commissioner’s response was blunt that those positions “cannot both be correct.”

That sentence is the heart of the ruling. It is also the reason this is more than a niche Freedom of Information dispute. KCC’s defence was essentially that no relevant information was held. The regulator’s response was that the council had not done the work needed to make that claim.

The original request was submitted by local campaigner Jon Patience in June last year. He asked for information about the cancellation or postponement of nine meetings following the county elections.

KCC responded in July 2025 with narrative and contextual information. Patience requested an internal review, arguing that further recorded information must exist, including communications and internal discussions about the cancellations. In August, the council replied that no information was held.

That position has now been rejected by the Information Commissioner, who found that KCC had not demonstrated, on the balance of probabilities, that it did not hold information falling within the scope of the request.

The ruling does not say that KCC definitely holds additional information. Nor does it conclude that anything was deliberately withheld. It is narrower than that, but still highly damaging. The Commissioner found that KCC had not carried out adequate and proportionate searches before asserting that no information was held.

According to the decision notice seen by the Kent Current, KCC told the Commissioner that no searches had been undertaken because the relevant staff relied on their professional knowledge, recollection, and internal discussions within the Democratic Services team. The council said the decisions had been made informally and at pace after a change in administration, and that all information had been communicated verbally.

That explanation did not satisfy the regulator. KCC also accepted that meeting cancellations are generally handled through electronic systems, including calendar notifications, and that such situations may involve emails or other electronic correspondence. In this case, the council said calendar cancellations had been issued, but maintained that no substantive information existed beyond confirmation that the meetings were cancelled.

The Commissioner found that this was not enough. Calendar cancellations are themselves records. Emails and calendar systems were obvious places to search, yet KCC had not searched them.

The most damaging section of the ruling concerns the contradiction between what KCC told Mr Patience and what it later told the ICO. In its internal review, KCC indicated that relevant services had conducted reasonable and proportionate searches of records, including emails and internal communications. In its representations to the Commissioner, it said no searches had been carried out.

“These positions cannot both be correct,” the decision notice states. The Commissioner said the inconsistency undermined the reliability of KCC’s account and weakened its assertion that it held no information.

The Commissioner also noted the nature of the request. It concerned the cancellation of formal committee meetings, which are routine governance functions of the council. He considered it “inherently unlikely” that such cancellations would generate no recorded information whatsoever, particularly where administrative systems are used to organise and notify attendees of meetings.

KCC has now been ordered to carry out adequate and proportionate searches for recorded information, including emails, calendar records and other electronic communications relating to the cancelled meetings. It must then confirm whether it holds any information and either disclose it or issue a refusal notice explaining why any exemption applies.

The council has 30 calendar days from the date of the decision notice to comply.

On one level, this is a story about FOI procedure. On another, it is about something more basic. Public bodies do not get to say 'there is nothing to see here' if nobody has actually looked.

The ruling comes at a difficult moment for KCC because questions about records, paper trails, and the visibility of decision-making have already been circulating at County Hall.

Similar concerns have been raised about the sale of Antony Gormley’s Two Stones from outside the Kent History and Library Centre in Maidstone. The sculpture had been part of Maidstone’s public realm for years, sitting outside one of the county’s main public buildings. Gormley studied at Maidstone College of Art, giving the work an obvious local resonance as well as artistic value.

Earlier this year, the sculpture disappeared.

KCC later confirmed that it had sold Two Stones back to the artist. It said the decision had been taken carefully as part of its work to manage financial pressures, and that returning the work to Gormley ensured its ongoing care and preserved the potential for future public exhibition.

That might have been a defensible position if the council had then shown its working. It did not.

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When the Kent Current asked basic questions about the sale, KCC declined to say how much it received, who signed off on the sale, what valuation was obtained, or what formal scrutiny the decision underwent. The silence was particularly striking because KCC’s own 2024/25 Statement of Accounts listed the 'Antony Gormley Boulders Sculpture' as a council-owned asset valued at £859,000. Asset valuations and sale prices are not the same thing, but when a council sells a public artwork that it has recently valued at that level, the public interest in knowing what happened is obvious.

KCC said, in response to our Freedom of Information request, there had been no formal decision to sell the sculpture, no officer authorisation, no decision record and no internal briefing note or report outlining the rationale for the sale. It confirmed that the sale was completed on 29 March, but continued to withhold the sale price, valuation information and correspondence relating to the transaction.

That is an extraordinary position for the disposal of a significant public asset. It is not necessary to believe that every council decision should produce a mountain of paperwork to think that selling a major artwork by one of Britain’s best-known sculptors ought to leave behind something more than a void.

The Kent Current challenged KCC’s refusal through the council’s internal review process. The review response arrived last week after 5pm on the final day the council could legally respond. KCC upheld its original position, maintaining that the sale price and valuation information should remain withheld on commercial grounds.

The council acknowledged that there was a public interest in disclosure. It accepted that revealing the information would contribute to openness, accountability and public understanding of how public assets are managed and disposed of, but it concluded that this was outweighed by the need to protect the commercial interests of both KCC and the purchaser.

The review said disclosing the agreed sale price would reveal confidential pricing information in a specialist market, potentially prejudice KCC’s ability to negotiate effectively in future transactions, and affect the purchaser’s commercial and reputational interests. It also said the purchaser had expressly indicated that they did not consent to publication of the sale price.

KCC’s position on the governance issue was even more revealing. The review said that Freedom of Information legislation only applies to information held by public authorities. It does not require the creation of new information and does not provide a mechanism to challenge the adequacy of internal processes where no recorded information exists.

That may be legally correct. It is also the problem.

The question is not whether FOI legislation can magic a decision record into existence. The question is why the sale of a major public artwork apparently did not generate one.

That is where the Two Stones case and this week’s ICO ruling begin to speak to each other. They are not the same case. The ICO has not ruled on the sculpture sale, and it would be wrong to suggest that it has. The Kent Current has now escalated the Two Stones complaint to the Information Commissioner, and that process remains ongoing.

But both cases circle the same basic issue. When significant decisions are made at KCC, what records are kept? How are they recalled? How confidently can the council tell the public that there is nothing more to see?

In the case of cancelled meetings, KCC said no relevant information was held. The ICO has now found that the council had not carried out the obvious searches needed to sustain that position. In the Two Stones case, KCC says there was no formal decision record, no officer authorisation and no briefing note setting out the rationale for the sale. The council is not merely withholding some information. It is saying key parts of the paper trail do not exist.

For a county council, that is a remarkable place to end up.

KCC is one of the largest local authorities in the country. It spends vast sums of public money, owns and disposes of public assets, and makes decisions that shape services across Kent. Its processes do not need to be thrilling. They do need to be visible enough for residents to understand how decisions are made and who is accountable for them.

The alternative is government by vanishing paper trail. A meeting is cancelled, but the records are apparently not there. A public artwork is sold, but the formal decision apparently does not exist. A request is answered, but the searches later turn out not to have happened. None of that inspires confidence.

Opposition leaders at County Hall have seized on the ICO ruling as evidence of wider governance problems under the current Reform administration.

Conservative group leader Harry Rayner described the decision notice as “a damning reflection” on the administration and said it showed “material inconsistencies” in KCC’s responses. He argued there was “clear evidence of a lack of good record keeping” and said the council’s governance reflected “a significant reduction in standards, a predisposition to secrecy and a failure to provide openness in decision making.”

Rayner also linked the ruling to his own experience of the administration, citing what he described as a continued failure to give reasons for the cancellation of Cabinet Committee meetings. His criticism is more political, but the underlying point is difficult for KCC to dismiss while the ICO’s decision notice sits on the table. The regulator has identified an inconsistency in the council’s account and ordered it to go back and do the searches it should have done before.

Green group leader Mark Hood said KCC’s performance on FOI requests was becoming “a real concern.” He said he had a separate complaint with the ICO regarding an FOI request submitted in March about the decision to permit debate on a motion regarding a supposed illegal immigration emergency during the pre-election period. Hood said he had still received no substantive response.

“It is clear from the decision of the ICO and from my experience that KCC is incapable of responding adequately to enquiries regarding the governance of the council,” Hood said. He added that the Green group “no longer has confidence in the governance functions of the council and its independence of the Reform UK administration.”

Labour group leader Alister Brady said the ruling should worry residents.

“We’re talking about cancelling major council meetings with apparently no records, no audit trail and no proper checks,” he said. “The regulator has found the council failed to comply with the law. That should concern every resident.”

Brady described the case as another example of what he called “Kent Chaos Council” and said it reflected a lack of accountability at the top of the authority.

The opposition parties were always likely to turn the ruling into a political attack. Reform now runs KCC, and the cancelled meetings followed the election that brought the party to power. But the ruling itself is not framed as a party-political document. It is a finding against Kent County Council as a public authority.

Systems, habits and cultures of disclosure can outlast any one political group. The ICO ruling is embarrassing for the current administration, but it also raises a deeper institutional question about how KCC records, searches for and discloses information when scrutiny becomes uncomfortable.

The Kent Current approached KCC for comment on the ICO ruling, the inconsistency identified by the Commissioner, and whether it had begun the ordered searches. It did not respond before publication.

That silence may not be surprising. KCC has not exactly rushed to answer awkward questions, but on a story about transparency, no response is still a response of sorts.

The council now has 30 days to comply with the ICO decision notice in the Patience case. It may carry out the searches and find nothing beyond the bare calendar cancellations it has already acknowledged. It may find something more substantive. Either outcome would at least be based on having looked.

The broader issue does not disappear with one set of searches. Opposition leaders are openly questioning the council’s governance arrangements. KCC’s own responses have left it defending a position that ought to make anyone uneasy, where significant decisions can apparently be made while leaving remarkably little documentary trace.

The dullest parts of local government are often the most important. Agendas, minutes, reports, decision records, internal briefings, calendar entries, and email chains are not glamorous, but they are how the public can see the machinery at work. They show who knew what, who approved what, what risks were considered, and whether decisions were properly scrutinised.

Without them, accountability starts to become a matter of trust.

KCC is asking for quite a lot of that at the moment.

In one case, it said searches had been carried out, then told the regulator they had not. In another, it says a major public artwork was sold without a formal decision record, officer authorisation or briefing note. The council may yet have explanations for all of this. It may even have better answers than the ones it has provided so far.

But when a public body repeatedly asks residents to accept that there is no paper trail, the obvious question is not unreasonable.

Who benefits from everything being so hard to find?

Footnotes

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