Ms Susan Davis

Email: [FOI #18449 email]

Reference: FOICR 13249/10

Date: 18 June 2010

Dear Ms Davis

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

I am sorry for the delay in replying to your e-mail of 26 April, further to your earlier request about incidents of first name/surname combinations of British passport-holders. Your request has been handled as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You asked:-

Thank you very much for your reply. Could you clarify some points. You say that the database is in use 7 days a week, but not that it is in use 24 hours a day. Are there any periods out of business hours when the database has quiet periods, when the query can be scheduled to run?

If this is not the case, I think it is fairly likely that snapshot copies of your database exist and that these will not be in constant use. You might for instance have these for backup, recovery, systems incident investigation, or testing purposes. Would it be possible for you to run the query against one of these? I appreciate that this would not give completely up to date data,but that would be fine for my purposes.

The IPS response is :-

In answer to your question I can inform you that there is no period available which would enable such a search of the IPS database, Equally, we cannot perform searches such as you have requested due to the limitations of our system.

Our records show that you have already written to us on 23 September, 24 November, 11 January and 3 February requesting identical information and we have sent responses explaining why we do not hold the information in the format that you have requested and the limitations of our database capabilities. There is nothing further to add to our original responses.

If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request by submitting a complaint within two months to the address below, quoting reference FOICR 13249/09 for an internal review, it would be helpful if you could say why you are dissatisfied with the response.

Information Access Team

Home Office
Ground Floor, Seacole Building

2 Marsham Street

London SW1P 4DF

e-mail: [email address]

As part of any internal review the Department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. If you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you would have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

I am sorry that I am unable to assist you further in this matter.

Yours sincerely

H Reid

Parliamentary & Correspondence Management Team

Passport Adviceline: 0300 222 0000 (07.00 - 23.00 seven days a week).

Email us at [Identity & Passport Service request email]. Visit our website at www.ips.gov.uk.

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Headquarters

Parliamentary & Correspondence Management Team

4^th Floor, Peel Building

2 Marsham Street

London

SW1P 4DF

Tel (020) 7035 8889

Fax (0870) 336 9175

Email [Identity & Passport Service request email]

Web www.ips.gov.uk