TWO organisations have been referred to the police by Scotland’s information watchdog after concerns they had they intentionally destroyed or hidden public records.

It is a criminal offence for a Scottish public authority to alter, erase, destroy or conceal records the public has a right to obtain under Freedom of Information (FoI) law .

In his annual report for 2018/19, Scottish Information Commissioner Daren Fitzhenry said he had received allegations about four public bodies engaging in such criminal conduct.

“Two of these allegations have been referred to Police Scotland,” he said.

It is not yet known which authorities are involved.

However it is a relatively rare step for the Commissioner to take.

The Commissioner also noted a sharp rise in the number of public bodies dragging their feet over responding to requests as their FoI workload increased, with staff shortages often a factor.

The number of cases in which an authority failed to respond to a request within the legal limit of 20 working days rose 56 per cent from 601 in 2017/18 to 940 in 2018/19.

The number of valid appeals rose 10% from 507 to 560, two thirds from people unhappy with answers from councils or the Scottish Government.

Appeals about public bodies failing to respond on time rose from 20% of all appeals to 26% last year.

Overall, public bodies received 83,953 FoI and Environmental Information Regulation requests in 2018/19, up 8.3% on 2017/18.

Public bodies including councils, the Government, NHS boards, universities and the police have been under a duty to open records to the public since 2005 unless there is a strong reason to withhold data, such as security or personal privacy.

Last year three-quarters of FoI requests ended with the full or partial disclosure of the information sought.

The Commmissioner also ruled in favour of requesters in two-thirds of appeals. Mr Fitzhenry said the performance of bodies was better than public pessimism suggested.

A recent poll found only 57% of Scots were “very” or “fairly confident” they would get a response to an FoI request to information from a public body, with 38% “not very” or “not at all confident”.

Mr Fitzhenry said: “We are seeing increasing numbers of information requests being made to Scottish public authorities.

“While many are performing well, there has been a concerning increase in failures to respond to requests for information on time. Such failures impact on people’s perception of both freedom of information and the authorities themselves.

“Public bodies improving their Freedom of Information practice will make a real difference not only to the requester’s experience but also to the authorities themselves.”

A spokesman for the Commissioner added: “Under Section 65 of the FoI Act it is an offence to alter, erase, destroy or conceal information in order to prevent disclosure under FOI. If there is evidence an offence may have been committed (this may, for example, come to light during an investigation or as the result of an allegation made to the Commissioner), he will refer the case to Police Scotland for further investigation, and to determine whether a prosecution should be brought.”