By Carole Ewart, Convener of the Campaign for Freedom of Information in Scotland

LAST week it was reported that rents could be increased to meet the cost to housing associations of being covered by the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Such a situation is hard to imagine given that housing associations must already answer information requests under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004, repeatedly stress they are open to their tenants by proactively giving and publishing information, and are accountable for their operation through the Scottish Housing Regulator. So, the only change for each housing association, and their 148 subsidiaries, will be that when they refuse to provide information, requestors can complain to the Scottish Information Commissioner to secure publication. An across-the-board increase in rents therefore appears excessive.

If the right processes are in place to manage information requests, on the environment or on any other issue, it will be business as usual, although the individual decisions made by housing associations will be subjected to independent scrutiny. An independent process should not be scary, as the current system has regulated the 10,000 bodies already covered by the Freedom of Information Scotland Act (FoISA) and the Environmental Information Regulations and served the public interest, for over a decade.

In addition, it is useful to remember that when those 10,000 public sector bodies were required to implement FoISA on January 1, 2005 no extra money was made available by the then Scottish Executive to meet the additional costs of setting up a system from scratch.

The Scottish Parliament decided that information should be freely available unless an individual request exceeded a cost threshold set at £600 and stipulated also how that cost could be calculated. Increasing rents to pay for speculative administration would go against the spirit and intention of our politicians. If the Scottish Government sticks to its guns and announces an implementation date of April 2018, housing associations will be able to copy and adapt the practice and systems which have been tried and tested over the years by bodies such as GP surgeries, housing departments within local authorities, schools, universities, police, the courts, the children’s hearing system, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. That is a lot of expertise to call upon.

The Campaign for Freedom of Information has repeatedly urged public authorities to pro-actively publish information which the public wants to see and that stops FoI requests being made in the first place. Routinely checking the disclosure log to see what has been requested in the past is one way of deciding what information to systematically publish in the future. We are assured by practitioners that it is just a question of adopting efficient processes.

The housing association situation exposes another problem which is that FoISA appears out of step with European and international human rights law. For example, housing associations are covered by the Human Rights Act 1998 which gives domestic effect to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in several cases, including Magyar Helsinki Bizottság v. Hungary , that a right to access information exists under Article 10 of the ECHR – for example, tenant groups have the right to receive information. This situation has arisen despite Scottish Government Ministers having a positive duty to comply with the ECHR, under S57 of the Scotland Act 1998.

Since 2002, Scottish Government ministers have promised to bring housing associations under FoISA and the latest consultation proposed an implementation date of April 1, 2018. However, there are signs of backtrackin,g as in a letter dated April 19 to the convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Local Government and Communities Committee the minister, Joe Fitzpatrick, indicates even more delays: “Following further engagement and consideration of the key issues, I anticipate a formal consultation response in the autumn, then I will be able to provide the committee with indicative timelines and how we intend to proceed.”

In an effort to debunk some of the myths, encourage collaboration and communication on good practice CFoIS, with funding from Unison Scotland, is resurrecting the Scottish Public Information Forum (SPIF) which is mentioned in the Scottish Government’s six FoI principles but has not met since 2010. We encourage all stakeholders to attend, both civil society and the public sector, to share best practice about how to be a rights-respecting organisation without needless expenditure. Attendance is free and via Eventbrite (www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/scottish-public-information-forum-spif-tickets-33685456106) and we particularly hope that housing associations and tenant organisations will attend the event.