These are Cornwall County Council, Corporation of London, Dartford Borough Council, London Borough of Lambeth, London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, Nottinghamshire County Council and Thurrock Borough Council.
A further 34 councils were rated as providing 'very good' responses against the survey criteria.
The survey "One month on – UK Local Authority responses to an FOI request", examined the current situation regarding councils' request management practices under the FOI Act and FOI (Scotland) Act, which came into force on 1st January, giving individuals for the first time the statutory right to see a massive amount of information held by Government departments and thousands of public bodies.
IDOX sent a letter to each authority designed to test its response to an FOI request. The letter also asked each council for details of its plans to manage requests and whether it had a software package to manage them, and whether it was considering implementation of other related technologies.
Responses to the request were assessed using nine criteria to examine different sections of the Acts, Code of Practice compliance, general principles of disclosure compliance and support of the 'spirit' of open and transparent government.
According to IDOX, 75% of respondents provided a full response to the request, indicating most council officers understood what was required. Only 3% could not respond to the request either because they applied exemptions (2%) or did not hold any information (1%).
Many respondents provided simple summarised responses, others provided supporting documentation from archives. Only a very few respondents found it necessary to redact confidential information, such as personal names of officers, according to IDOX.
Eighty-six percent of the councils responded within the required 20 working days period, with the highest response rate achieved by English authorities (83%) followed by 82% of Welsh authorities and 77% of Scottish authorities.
County Councils had the highest response rate to the request with 94% responding, said IDOX. Unitary Authorities and District Councils demonstrated an 82% response rate each.
The survey also found that 52% of respondents acknowledged the relationship between records management and FOI request tracking, while those that are considering technology solutions such as Electronic Document and Records Management systems expect to implement a system within the next 12-18 months.
"It is gratifying to see the majority of local authorities met the IDOX plc request in full, and within the deadline," said Tony Burton, OBE, Director of IDOX Information Services Ltd. "The number of requests is likely to increase with additional publicity and local authorities will need to put in place people, processes and technology to deliver an excellent service to the public."
