I would like to request the following information regarding how your organisation manages its statutory obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and UK GDPR (Subject Access Requests abbreviated as SAR).

Management of Freedom of Information Requests:
1. For each of the last three financial years, please provide the number of FOI requests received?
Due to requests having a statutory 20 working day response time, and that cases could be paused, or internal reviews (raised within 8 weeks of the response) the Council reports on requests due in the financial year not those received.
• 2025/26: 1,567
• 2024/25: 1,279
• 2023/24: 1,281

2. For each of the last three financial years, please provide the number of FOI requests responded to within the statutory timeframe?
• 2025/26: 1,307 (83.4%)*
• 2024/25: 1,161 (92.8%)
• 2023/24: 1,153 (90%)
There were three areas within the Council which had members of staff retire/leave the Council that were involved in the FOI process which has impacted our figures for this financial year, however we also had a significant increase in volume received. We are aiming to return to the 90% target this year.

3. Please confirm whether the requests for FOI are managed by a centralised team (Information Governance/GDPR/Data Protection) or by individual departments/service areas or a Hybrid model (please describe briefly if hybrid)
Requests are logged and triaged from a central team. This team is also responsible for QA’ing and issuing responses. They will provide advice and guidance and also publish the questions and answers (without personal information) to the disclosure log.
There are FOI Co-ordinators within services/directorates/teams depending on volume received and requirement, who will act as point of contact and then have more knowledge of who best to allocate the request within service. Services hold the information being sought, while the central team are able to advise on the legislation.
Legal Services handle internal reviews, and provision of any legal advice should a case require it. We have approx. 1-2% of requests that get escalated to internal review.

4. Please provide the number of staff members (FTE/PTE if available) dedicated to handling FOI requests.
We have one full time member of staff in the central team that deals with FOIs day to day, but works a 4day week and also has other duties they will deal with. There are two other individuals who will cover their workload. One of these was more heavily involved, but is currently working with the Subject Access Requests team more closely as we have launched a central team there.

Management of Subject Access Requests:
5. For each of the last three financial years, please provide the number of SAR requests received?
• 2025/26: Not held – reporting is underway and will be released in SIRO report. Future publication exemption being applied. Added in 2022/23 to have 3 years data.
• 2024/25: 167
• 2023/24: 134
• 2022/23: 130

6. For each of the last three financial years, please provide the number of SAR requests responded to within the statutory timeframe?
• 2025/26: Not held – reporting is underway and will be released in SIRO report. Future publication exemption being applied. Added in 2022/23 to have 3 years data.
• 2024/25: 101 (60%)
• 2023/24: 102 (76%)
• 2022/23: 73 (56%)
For full stats which breaks down SARs by the 3 areas, please refer to our SIRO report: https://wokingham.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s79828/SIRO%20Annual%20Report%202024.25.pdf

7. Please confirm whether the requests for SAR are managed by a centralised team (Information Governance/GDPR/Data Protection) or by individual departments/service areas or a Hybrid model (please describe briefly if hybrid)
The Council have just moved to a central team operating model. Prior to this; Children Services dealt with their requests, Adults Services dealt with their requests, and the Information Services team dealt with all non Adults and Children Services requests.

8. Please provide the number of staff members (FTE/PTE if available) dedicated to handling SAR requests.
2.6FTE but this will be reviewed over the course of the 12 month period since launch to determine if this is sufficient or require additional resourcing.