HARROW Council have denied claims that it is encouraging employees to purge emails to avoid having to disclose them under the Freedom of Information Act (FIA).

Under the Act, which came into force on January 1, members of the public have the right to request information from public bodies such as councils, and to be supplied with the material if the body still holds it and the cost is not prohibitive.

Information that can be requested includes business correspondence like emails, but according to a former insider at the Council, who did not want to be named, a circular email on the Council mailing list last week told employees to delete all messages over six months old. The source said that the Council had never had a policy of deleting emails in the past and that its timing was suspicious in view of the new legislation.

But a Council spokesman said that the policy did not breach regulations because responsibility for the FIA lay with individual officers: "All emails older than six months are deleted from all council PCs to ensure the network is not overloaded. This is done periodically and does not breach the Freedom of Information Act. Officers are individually responsible for saving any important emails in work format if they feel they may be of relevance in future regarding the FIA. For example, an officer might save correspondence with a development company over a planning issue or correspondence with a local community group about plans for a new park. However, they would delete an email to a colleague asking a simple request for information."

For more information on the FIA and how to make a request for information, visit the Department for Constitutional Affairs website on www.dca.gov.uk/foi.