County councillors have expressed concerns over the burden of dealing with Freedom of Information requests after a report revealed KCC was falling short of its target for responses.

The council said that in the past ten years, the number of FOI and EIR (Environmental Information) requests had more than doubled. At the same time there has been a 44% increase in requests under the Data Protection Act over the same period.

The cost of dealing with FOI requests between 2005 and 2017 is £1.2m - estimated to work out at an average of £66 per request.

One councillor said requests were often made by “lazy journalists” who had failed to realise the information was available elsewhere.

Cllr Catherine Rankin (Con), who represents Tunbridge Wells on KCC, said she shared the view of former Labour PM Tony Blair who said introducing the right to know had been one of his biggest mistakes.

“My experience on a district council is [requests] can come from quite lazy journalists who could find the information in many different ways without submitting an FOI request. The costs that fall on us means less money for frontline services.”

She said KCC was doing its best to be transparent but should try to head off formal requests by encouraging applicants to retract them if the authority was able to provide the information informally.

Cllr Susan Carey (Con), the KCC cabinet member who oversees the legislation, said: “Obviously we do what we are required to do and we go out of our way to get people the information they need.”

But she said requests came from companies seeking commercial information and academics doing research was a case of KCC “doing their homework for them.”

Frivolous requests were common, such as one that “asked for the title of every book borrowed from libraries over the last five years.”

Liberal Democrat councillor Trudy Dean said the legislation had been “extremely liberating” but that where there were significant delays for individual requests, more explanation was needed to ensure that the authority was not trying to “fiddle” its response.

Figures show that in 2016, KCC dealt with 2,123 requests compared to 504 in 2005 when the Act came into force.

Of those made in 2016, 60% came from individuals but just 14% came from the media.