'The dog ate my FOI work'
In January the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ submitted six freedom of information requests relating to sex offenders and schools to the Department for Education and Skills (DfES).
Last month - nine months later - we received the following batch of responses:
• In two cases, the DfES does not hold the information requested.
• In two cases, supplying the information would exceed the cost limit.
• In one case, the information was exempt as personal information protected by the Data Protection Act.
• In one case, the information requested was supplied - now several months out of date.
It's difficult to see why it needed nine months to come up with this. The DfES apologised for the delays but offered no satisfactory explanation for why it was handing in its work so late. Perhaps officials need to look to some of their schools for .
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°ä´Ç³¾³¾±ð²Ô³Ù²õÌýÌý Post your comment
It was my understanding that any requests made under the FOI act had to be responded to within 20 days?
9 months to get a list of, as you so nicely put it, excuses similar to those employed by children evading homework seems ridiculous, especially from the dfes.
My main concern is that apathy, laziness, or lack of rescores will lead to such requests meeting the same fate on an increasingly common basis.
Cherie Willers
University of Westminster
PG Dip Broadcast Journalism student
FOI requests have to be responded to within 20 working days - unless the public authority says the information is potentially exempt and that it needs more time to assess whether it is in the public interest to release it. Under these circumstances there is then no legal limit to the amount of time it can take.
But what shouldn't happen is an extension beyond the 20 days, only for you then to be told that they don't hold the information at all or that it is too expensive to find it.