News / Politics
Councillors to debate ‘obfuscatory’ deletion of Rees’ emails
Conservative Party councillors are making a stand for openness and transparency within City Hall following the discovery that Marvin Rees’ official emails and inbox were deleted when he left office.
Freedom of Information (FOI) requests pertaining to the email communications of the former mayor have been denied by the council, with digital records deleted after 30 days as these are not a “recognised storage system”.
Bristol’s Conservative group deputy leader, Stockwood councillor Graham Morris, called the deletion of Rees’ emails “obfuscatory” and says he will be arguing “for much more transparency and better record keeping of key decision-makers in Bristol City Council”.
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The Conservatives are bringing a golden motion to the full council meeting on December 10 which means that the issue has to be debated.
Morris said: “I was very surprised and disappointed to discover that emails of key officials and decision-makers within Bristol City Council are not stored in such a way as to allow easy retrieval or accessibility.
“The law and regulatory authorities already provide certain safeguards against disclosure for different types or category of information.
“For example, the Information Commissioner’s Office has an extensive list of exemptions for things involving confidential personal content and matters around commercial sensitivity.
“No doubt our existing data handling policy fully complies with all of the existing legal rules, requirements, and obligations.
“However, these days, emails almost certainly constitute a primary means of everyday contact.
“Consequently, I think the authority should be doing more to allow retrieval and access to this important medium for FOIs and subject access requests.
“Reform would also allow better standardisation of its document storage archive.
“This latest incident – with its rather artificial limitations and rather obfuscatory outcome – actually provides us with an opportunity to update local practices and become an exemplar of transparency and accountability as a public body.
“I hope our proposals command majority support when they come to be debated at the next full council.”
Graham Morris is one of two Conservative councillors for Stockwood – photo: Graham Morris
Speaking in October, Bristol City Council’s monitoring officer and director of legal services, Tim O’Gara, said: “The mayor’s inbox will have been deleted in accordance with (the) retention schedule over the course of the summer.
“Email is not our recognised storage facility and we have other document retention case management systems and the like where relevant materials and information that officers and councillors have worked on over a number of years that’s held in those systems would of course be searched in line with any information request that we receive.
“Just to be clear, if we hold information that relates to the former directly elected mayor and it’s held in any of our other information storage systems and we receive a Freedom of Information request that relates to that information then we will go through the usual process of considering whether it should be disclosed or whether it is exempt from disclosure in line with our information policies.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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