A SENIOR councillor has hit out a “serial time-waster” who is “abusing” the Freedom of Information system.

Tim Young, deputy leader of Colchester Council, has attacked Tory activist Jeremy Hagon after the council hopeful “bombarded” officers with Freedom of Information (FoI) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests.

In his own fact-finding mission, Mr Young (Lab) asked council officers for details of Mr Hagon’s requests since May.

At the time of writing Mr Hagon had made seven FoI requests and four EIR requests since the spring.

In total, officers say they have spent dozens of hours formulating responses to the Conservative, which Mr Young said will amount to a bill of “thousands of pounds”.

He said: “Mr Hagon has bombarded council officers with requests he need not have to.

“He is a member of the Conservative party and will have access to Conservative councillors who can make these requests directly with officers.

“He is becoming a serial time-waster.”

Mr Young added: “It is clear he has an agenda but getting the information through his own councillors would still allow him to make political gain should he want to.

“It’s not as if we are hiding anything - some of the things he is asking about are publicly available anyway.”

Among Mr Hagon’s requests are the overall cost to council taxpayers of the Tollgate Village appeal, how much new wheelie bins had cost, how much waste is fly-tipped and how many parking fines have been handed out to vehicles parked illegally in Winstree Road and Chapel Road.

He also queried the authority’s annual visitor numbers.

Mr Hagon responded: “Members of the public are entitled to request information on any subject they so wish.

“Our local councillors are working hard to represent their individual wards as I am sure councillor Young is doing and as a consequence of their hard work, quite often do not have the capacity to help everyone.

“Freedom of Information requests submitted to the local public authority (Colchester Council) are within the remit of the Act and all Colchester residents are entitled to ask such questions.

“For many years, communication between the LibDem/Labour run council in Colchester and the general public has been poor.

“Waste and visitor figures for example, which affect everyone, are not readily available to see in detail and we are often presented with a simple, some might say hard to comprehend, headline figure which lacks evidentiary support.

"If the information requested is readily available, shouldn’t officers be simply pointing to the published data in their responses? This does not happen because the data simply hasn’t been published."

He added: “Cllr Young should be asking himself the question as the deputy leader of the council, why a local resident is having to ask for clarification on subjects of public interest and should be ashamed that this information is not being made publicly available in the first place.”

The Freedom of Information Act came into effect in 2000.