Information Access Team
Information Management Service
Financial & Commercial Group
2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF
Switchboard 020 7035 4848
E-mail: [email address] Website: www.homeoffice.gov.uk
Mr. Philip Main
Case Ref:
CR 12608
[FOI #16328 email] Date:
13th January 2010
Dear Mr. Main,
I write further to my email of the 10th November 2009 concerning your request for an
Internal Review into the handling and decision of your Freedom of Information Act
request CR12608 - copies of any correspondence between the Home Office and
121Media/Phorm in 2005. I apologise for the delay in providing you with a response
to this review.
In your email dated the 13th September 2009, you asked that this review provide
confirmation whether or not the information you had requested was actually held by
the Home Office. In your previous email to the case officer for this request, you also
questioned why you had been provided with a link to information that you considered
to be out-of-scope of your request.
I have concluded this review and have decided that the Home Office is in breach of
s1(1)(a) of the Act – we did not confirm or deny whether the information you had
requested for 2005 was actually held by the Department. I can confirm that the
Home Office does not hold the information that you requested.
The link provided to you by my colleague was for related information that we had
previously released under FoI concerning correspondence in 2007 and 2008. What
my colleague omitted to explain was that the information we referred you to is the full
extent of the correspondence that we hold between ourselves and Phorm / 121
Media for any period, and that this link was provided in an effort to be helpful rather
than to answer your exact question.
In light of this, I have also decided that the provisions of s21(1) do not apply in this
instance. The provisions of s21(1) were not engaged because the information you
had requested was not held by the department. The Home Office does not hold
copies of any correspondence between Phorm / 121 Media and ourselves dated in
2005. I am sorry if this has caused you any confusion.
This completes the internal review process by the Home Office. If you remain
dissatisfied with the response to your FoI request, you have the right of complaint to
the Information Commissioner at the following address:
The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Yours sincerely,
Ian Lister
Information Access Consultant
Information Access Team
