Information Access Team
Information Management Service
Room No: 4th Floor, Seacole Buidling, 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF
Fax 0207 035 0739 Direct Line 0207 035 4252
Our Ref 11250
Your Ref
Date 3 March 2009
WORKING TOGETHER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC
Dear Mr Anderson
Thank you for your email of 24th January 2009, in which you requested a procedural review of the handling of your Freedom of Information (FOI) request about holding people’s DNA and fingerprint details. You had indicated that you were concerned at the length of time it was taking to provide a full response.
Your original request was received by the Home Office on 22nd December 2008. Section 10(1) of the FOI Act requires that, with limited exceptions, FOI requests are answered within 20 working days.You should ordinarily have been provided with a full response to your request by22nd January 2009. The normal 20 working day limit can be extended under section 10(3) if a qualified exemption is engaged and additional time is required to consider the public interest. In order to extend the deadline in accordance with section 10(3) the authority must inform the applicant of this fact within the 20 working day deadline and provide him/her with a revised response deadline “that is reasonable in the circumstances”.
Having examined the handling of this case to date it is clear that section 10(1) of the FOI Act has been breached. An email update was sent to you on 20th February 2009.However this was sent considerably outside the 20 working day deadline and in any event did not seek to extend the deadline, even belatedly, in accordance with section 10(3). Indeed no qualified exemptions are considered relevant in this case.
I apologise for the Home Office’s failure to meet its obligations under the FOI Act in this case. I have discussed the handling of the case with the caseworker. A response has been drafted, is now awaiting sign off, hence my not enclosing it with this letter today. You should however receive this very soon, and by 13thMarch at the latest. This however does not alter the fact that section 10(1) was breached in this case.
The Home Office is committed to providing full responses to FOI requests within the 20 working day limit specified by section 10(1); or alternatively and where necessary within a reasonable period where the deadline is legitimately extended under section 10(3) to allow for consideration of the public interest test. Although there are occasions, where for genuine reasons, this is not always possible I recognise that this request could, and should, have been completed within 20 working days. I have reminded the unit which handled your request of the need to correspond with the applicant in a timely and efficient manner, and in accordance with the FOI Act.
I hope however that you will be satisfied with the content of the response that you will shortly receive, but should you be dissatisfied with it I can arrange for that response to be reviewed. My review has concentrated solely on the issues raised in your email of 24th January.
Should you be dissatisfied with the outcome of this procedural review you have a further right of complaint to the Information Commissioner, as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. You can write to him at:
The Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
or submit your concerns online at:
Yours sincerely
Martin Riddle
Information Access Consultant
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The Constitution Unit, a research body at University College London, is carrying out an independent evaluative study of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in co-operation with a number of public authorities, including the Home Office. An important part of the evaluation process is gathering the experiences and opinions of FOI requesters like you. Any information you provide will be handled in accordance with the privacy policy explained in the survey.
If you would like to take part in this study, please click the following link to be taken directly to the surveyOr, if you prefer, contact Ben Worthy at or on 020 7679 4974 to ask more about the study.
If you have filled this survey out before, UCL invite you to fill it out again in light of the recent response to your request.
WORKING TOGETHER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC