Mr Ganesh Sittampalam
[FOI #11837 email]
18 June 2009
Dear Mr Sittampalam,
Re: Request for Information – RFI20090686
Thank you for your email of 9 June 2009, in response to our letter of the same date. You said:
“I simply don't understand why it should take so long to collate a few contracts.”
There are three main reasons why it would take more than 2.5 days to respond to your original request:
firstly, a 'contract' is not necessarily a single document – rather, it may be a collection of documents
(including side letters, contract variations, schedules etc.) which only have full meaning when considered
together and it is invariably the collation of these documents (rather than the retrieval of the original
contract document) that takes the time. Secondly, in the case of some contractors, there may not be a
single contract, but rather multiple contracts each relating to a different aspect of the service provided by
the contractor. Thirdly, if your request for ‘all contracts’ is interpreted literally, it would extend to a large
number of contracts to which the BBC is not directly a party, but which we may review in order to ensure
compliance (for example, where our contractors themselves subcontract an aspect of their work). These
may or may not be of relevance or interest to you; but their inclusion within the scope of the request
would inevitably increase the amount of work required to comply with your request, potentially beyond
the appropriate limit.
In your email of 9 June you also refer to the list of contractors shown on the relevant page of the BBC
website, and if it is merely these five named contractors in which you are interested, then we will narrow
the scope of your request to the main contracts between those five, but we ask that you please confirm
this. (Please note that this list is less comprehensive than that provided on page 4 of our Annual Review;
see
www.tvlicensing.co.uk/aboutus).
As stated previously, we will be happy to consider your narrowed request.
I trust that this clarifies the position.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Gardner
Senior Policy Adviser, TV Licensing Management Team
