Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Customer Contact Unit
Eastbury House
30 - 34 Albert Embankment
London
SE1 7TL
Telephone 08459 33 55 77
Website: www.defra.gov.uk
Email: defra.[Defra request email]
Steve Elibank
Our ref RFI 3437
Date 21 July 2010
Email to request-42201-
[email address]
Dear Mr Dean
REQUEST FOR INFORMATION: UOHC
Thank you for your request for information for copies of all correspondence received from
the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations (UOHC) since 2002, which we received on
18 August. We are dealing with your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA).
In response to my email of 19 July advising you that following a search of our paper and
electronic records, Defra's central correspondence unit has no records of any
correspondence from the UOHC, you provided a link to a list of the consultees contacted
as part of the consultation on the proposed Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies
(TSE) Regulations 2008. I have checked our records and although Defra did consult the
Kashrus Committee of the UOHC on the proposed TSE Regulations 2008, the UOHC is
not listed as having responded to the consultation in the summary of responses at
http://collections.europarchive.org/tna/20090104005811/http://defra.gov.uk/corporate/cons
ult/tseregs-2008/summary-responses.pdf i.e. this consultation provides no evidence of
correspondence received by Defra from the UOHC.
Defra want to be as open as possible in answering requests and the Act itself requires us
to help people obtain the information they are looking for. Unfortunately, as the
Department is responsible for a very wide range of policy areas, your request is very broad
and could cover an enormous amount of information. There is no central list of
consultation responses so it seems likely that that to contact every business area in the
department would exceed the £600 cost limit which the Government has for dealing with
FOIA requests as set down in s.12 of FOIA. Therefore, under section 12 of the FOIA,
Defra is not obliged to comply with your request and we will not be processing this request
further. However, if you were to make a new request for a more narrow category of
information, it may be that we could comply with that request within the appropriate limit,
although I cannot guarantee that this will be the case.
The best way we can help you is to ask you to consider narrowing down your request to
focus more clearly on the precise information you are seeking. You could for example,
narrow down your request to one particular policy area. You can browse through the
material that has already been made publicly available on Defra’s website
www.defra.gov.uk to see if this would help you identify more precise questions that we
might be able to answer at less cost.
If you are unable or unwilling to narrow down your request, please let me know. We
will, of course, consider such a response in accordance with our obligations under the
FOIA, which could mean that, in accordance with section 12 of the FOIA concerning
cost limits for providing information, we are unable to provide you with the information
that you are seeking. However, we wanted to give you an opportunity to reconsider
your request and describe more precisely the information you wish to receive so that it
falls within the cost limit mentioned in the third paragraph. Please note that if you
modify your request, we will handle it as a new request.
If you have any queries about this letter please contact me.
Yours sincerely
JENNIFER LONG
