I am the review officer appointed to undertake the internal review, being someone who works in an area of the Department having no past or present dealings in relation to Local Government Ombudsmen, nor the division that deals with this, and who had no involvement in any of the three cases listed above.

You asked for an internal review of the handling of the responses, by Communities and Local Government, to three of your recent Freedom of Information requests as follows:

All three of these cases have been brigaded into one internal review.  I will address each case individually in the following paragraphs.

On case F0003420, you wrote to this Department on 30 September and received a reply on the 2 of November stating that no correspondence had been received.  The deadline for reply was the 29 October, so the reply was delayed by one working day beyond the statutory twenty working days.  The reply was delayed as the result of an administrative error and I can only apologise, on behalf of this Department, for this late response. 

I have now carefully reviewed the handling process for this request, and I believe that although your request was not initially fulfilled within the statutory twenty working days, that the response you have received is correct.

On case F0003433, you wrote to this department on 29 September.  You were sent a reply on the 3 November 2009, stating that Ministers had not acted under section 32(3) of the Local Government Act of 1974 in the last five years.  In order for this request to have fulfilled within the statutory twenty working days, a reply should have been sent by the 28 October; therefore the reply was delayed by four working days. 

This reply was delayed, partly as the result of an administrative error, but also as the response needed internal clearance by other areas of the Department to ensure that the reply was complete and accurate.  I also note that the official responding did not acknowledge the delay in responding either in the reply or within the accompanying email.  I apologise, on behalf of this Department, for the delay in replying and for the lack of acknowledgement of this delay within the reply. 

As above, I have carefully reviewed the handling process for this request, and I believe that although the request was not initially fulfilled within the statutory twenty working days, that the response you have received since is correct.

On case F0003369, you wrote to this department on 23 September.  You received a reply on the 20 October, which was within the statutory twenty working days.  You then requested an internal review on the handling of this FOI request on the 21 of October.  As this request was received on time, I can only conclude that your request for a review concerns the content of the response.

Your request concerned the way in which this Department monitors complaints received about Local Government Ombudsmen and how Ministers are made aware of complaints.  This followed on from a previous request on the same subject (F0003320), which was judged to be exempt for consideration under the FOI Act, due to the excessive costs of retrieving the information you requested.  I refer to case F0003320 as background but it has not been considered as part of this review. 

Having carefully reviewed the papers for F0003369, although I believe that your request for information was fully met, I think that aspects of the reply could have been clarified in more detail. The reply you have received sets out the way that this Department monitors correspondence, and notes that all correspondence is recorded by the subject area concerned.  The reply could have offered more information about how this Department monitors complaints and how Ministers are made aware of complaints about Local Government Ombudsmen.

I have referred the case back to the business area concerned, and asked that they reconsider their response to you, and respond to the points above in more detail. This further response is due within twenty working days of the date of this letter.

If you are not satisfied with these three decisions, you may write to the Information Commissioner asking him to decide whether Communities and Local Government have complied with their obligations under the Act. You should direct any such appeal to: