THE council has said it doesn't know how many complaints have been made against taxi drivers in Herefordshire as its system cannot access the information.

In response to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Hereford Times for the number of complaints made about taxi drivers in the county, the council said that its "reporting systems" were unable to find the data.

It said that manually searching for the information, across 3,212 files and 23,273 emails, would take at least 1,043 hours.

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Responding to an FOI request which asked for the number and type of complaints against taxi drivers, the number and type of actions taken, and the number of referrals to other authorities over the last five years, Herefordshire Council wrote: "This information is not held in a form that would enable it to be located, retrieved and extracted within 18 hours.

"Our electronic reporting systems are unable to run a report for this information. To ascertain the data requested officers would need to manually check individual files for this information.

"An initial search has shown that 3,212 files and 23,273 emails would need to be checked for this information.

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"The details would need to be noted and once all files had been checked in this way, the total figures and details requested could be calculated. This would take at least 1,043 hours."

Under the FOI Act, public bodies can refuse requests if they estimate that responding will take over 18 hours.

The council said that the request could be narrowed down to allow it to be responded to in an appropriate amount of time, and the Hereford Times has approached the information governance department regarding this.