21^st May 2010

Dear Independent Police Support Group,

Freedom of Information Appeal - Reference A0005/2010

You requested an Internal Review under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) on the 12^th May as you felt that your request had not been delivered within the 20 working day agreement.

Handling of the Request

Your initial request for information was received by West Yorkshire Police on 3^rd February 2010 and a response was sent you on the 17^th May 2010. As such under the statute, this response was well outside of the 20 working days allowed. In total, it took 70 working days to complete which is 50 days over the legal limit. You were, I note, informed of problems due to workloads in the section and staff shortages, however, this delay was considerable and your request should have been dealt with far quicker. You also asked that the Freedom of Information (FOI) Team provide you with some indication as to when the request would be complete. I note that this information was not provided.

With regard to the long delay in the Force's response to your request, I have asked that in future they provide requesters with some idea of when they are likely to receive their answers. Whilst this can be difficult, it has benefits for the FOI staff in that it prompts them to chase the information providers more vigorously but, more importantly, it provides the requester with a better idea of when they might receive the information. The Force has recognised that over the past few years that there has been a huge growth in FOI requests. (We've seen an increase from 2005 to 2009 of close to 100% in the numbers of requests received) As such over the past 6 months we've increased our numbers of staff by 3 people to help us better manage requests. The early results of these increased staff numbers have shown that request are being dealt with in a much more timely manner and we are confident that problems such as you've encountered will soon be a thing of the past.

Please accept our apologies for the manner in which your request has been dealt with and I hope that you are assured that measures have been taken to ensure that this situation does not happen again.

If you are not satisfied with this response and wish to take this appeal further you will need to contact the Information Commissioner's Office, quoting this Appeal Reference, the reason for your appeal and the fact that you've already been through the first stage of the Appeals process. The address of the Information Commissioner's Office is as follows:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Telephone: 01625 545 745

Fax: 01625 524 510

Yours sincerely,

Steven Harding

Head of Information Management