FREEDOM of Information is a good thing, right?

We all want access to information.

Case in point, smartphones and the worldwide web.

But can we have too much of a good thing? Tim Young, deputy leader of Colchester Council thinks so. Or rather, he is not against accessing information but believes there is a better way to access it.

READ MORE: Council boss hits out at 'time-waster' FoI man

The Freedom of Information Act came into effect in 2000 and has been criticised by some as a “timewaster’s charter”.

That is largely down to flippant requests which, in reality, serve no purpose and have no public interest.

One of the questions which must be posed to Mr Young here is: Would Colchester Council have voluntarily published the cost of the Tollgate appeal in an easy-to-spot area of its website?

Knowing the system as we do, that information will be public but it won’t all be in one place.

Local authorities are required to publish any expenditure above £500, and we doubt any of the bills relating to that appeal would have been under £500, so each time a payment was made, it must be recorded.

That means any member of the public could click through the spreadsheets and come up with a final appeal figure which might be somewhere near to the final figure. But would they do so.

Mr Young decries the waste of public money spent on finding the answers to Jeremy Hagon’s questions.

However, democracy should be transparent and accountable. If Freedom of Information is the way to find out, there is no price too high for democracy.