Dear Mr Edwards

I am writing with regard to FOI requests and the "address for
correspondence" definition, which seems to have been causing Rother
council some difficulties recently.

You have said, in reply to several email-only FOI requests, that you
are awaiting guidance from the ICO.  I therefore wanted to alert you
to the Ministry of Justice guidance on the question of whether an
email address constitutes an address for correspondence.
http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/foi-procedural-what.htm states
that:

"Return address

There is no obligation to comply with a request for information if it
does not give a return address.

If a request is received by email and no postal address is given, the
email address should be treated as the return address."

I hope that this clears up the question, and that you can now feel
able to respond to emailled requests, whether or not a postal address
is given.

Full disclosure:  I have done some voluntary and paid work for the
charity that created the website www.whatdotheyknow.com, although I
have not been involved in the development of that particular website.

Yours,

Etienne
--
Etienne Pollard
xxxxx@xxxx.xxx
+44 (0) 7946 415 996