IN his letter to the Standard on January 14, Steve Tilley has clearly misunderstood Cotswold District Council’s concerns about the Freedom of Information Act.

We are fully supportive of the Act and have stated clearly that we respect the rights of the media, lobby groups, charities and private individuals to obtain information about the council via FOI requests.

Additionally, our website cotswold.gov.uk contains a wide range of information, and a number of databases, which the public can obtain easily without recourse to the FOI procedure.

Indeed, we have for some time now published details of all of our financial expenditure, which is over and above the requirements of the Local Government Transparency Code.

The key issue that we did highlight within our recent submission to an Independent Commission was that, while we deal with some FOI requests from companies pursuing genuine concerns, they are outnumbered considerably by enquiries from firms seeking information for their own benefit rather than in the public interest.

This is of concern to us, given the impact on staff time of what are often very detailed enquiries – and those concerns are shared by other local authorities across the country.

MIKE CLARK

Corporate Planning Manager, CDC