THE CITY council is facing a complaint over its handling of a Freedom of Information (FOI) request.

A request was handed to Brighton and Hove City Council in October, asking for the amount of bicycles on the Old Shoreham Road over a four-year period.

Andrew Peters of the GMB Brighton and Hove taxi section, is now in the process of submitting a formal complaint to the council over its handling of his FOI.

Mr Peters argued the council took three months to respond – over the 20 working day limit – and only after the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) intervened.

He also argues the council did not provide all the data it held on the route that it had relied on in a government bid for funding.

Writing to the ICO, he said: “The council took over three months to respond to the FOI request which was only after direction was given by the ICO.

“I was eventually provided with what I considered to be the full data needed with my investigation on the councils recent bid for funding a project.

“I studied this data and found what I considered to be important information and corresponded with the council based on that data.

“However it was only by chance that the council let slip that there was further data that it had relied on for submitting the bid for the government funding.”

In a bid for funding, the council told government that "the Old Shoreham Road temporary cycle lane... has seen an increase of 61 per cent in the number of cyclists using this route".

Officials responded to Mr Peters’ FOI request saying they held no data for the route from before September 2020.

The council later clarified the figure was reached by comparing a week-long "video survey" in July 2020 with a "manual count" from four years earlier.

A council spokesperson said: “We have apologised to Mr Peters for the delay in responding to his original FOI request.

“This was due to technical issues which have now been resolved.

“We have since responded to follow up requests for information and clarification, including signposting Mr Peters to the relevant, publicly available data.

“We consider all formal complaints we receive in accordance with our complaints procedures.”