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ACPO funding
Ganesh Sittampalam made this Freedom of Information request to Home Office
The request was refused by Home Office.
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
10 March 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
Please provide a list of all funding provided to the ACPO by the
Home Office, together with any associated contracts or other
documents detailing what the funding is for.
Yours faithfully,
Ganesh Sittampalam
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
9 April 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
Your response to my request of 10th March is now overdue. Please
let me know immediately when you expect to reply, or I will
complain to the Information Commissioner.
If you have lost it, the full request can be found at
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ac...
Yours sincerely,
Ganesh Sittampalam
From: Information Access
Home Office
14 April 2009
Dear Mr Sittampalam
Thank you for your e-mail of 9 April telling us that you have not received
a reply to the Freedom of Information request you sent on 10 March about
Home Office funding provided to ACPO.
I have been asked to conduct a review into why you have not received a
reply to your request and hope to be able to report back to you no later
than 24 April. I can confirm that I have not been involved in the
consideration of your request.
Yours sincerely
Steve Kirk
Information Access Team
Information Management Service
Financial and Commercial Group
4th Floor, Seacole Building (NE)
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
show quoted sections
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
From: Information Access
Home Office
24 April 2009
Dear Mr Sittampalam
Please find our reply attached to your recent complaint about the handling
of a Freedom of Information request.
Yours sincerely
Steve Kirk
Information Access Team
Information Management Service
Financial and Commercial Group
4th Floor, Seacole Building (NE)
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
show quoted sections
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
Home Office
28 April 2009
Reference : T4498/9
Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 10/03/2009 9:28:26 PM
A reply is attached.
show quoted sections
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
28 April 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
Please provide details of your costs estimate so I can understand
how I can narrow my request or challenge your estimate.
In view of your violation of the statutory limit in answering my
original request, please provide this information immediately.
Yours sincerely,
Ganesh Sittampalam
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
3 May 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Home Office's
handling of my FOI request 'ACPO funding'.
Firstly, it is now 35 working days since I submitted my request and
you have failed to provide advice and assistance in narrowing my
request to fit within the costs threshold.
Secondly, you seem to be claiming that collating the documents I
request would take more than 24 hours of work. I do not find this
claim credible and ask that it be reviewed.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ac...
Yours sincerely,
Ganesh Sittampalam
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
7 June 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
I sent a request for an internal review of this request over a
month ago and have had no reply.
If you have lost it, you can find the entire history here:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ac...
Yours sincerely,
Ganesh Sittampalam
Home Office
27 July 2009
Reference : T7366/9
Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 28/04/2009 16:27:11
A reply is attached.
show quoted sections
From: Ganesh Sittampalam
27 July 2009
Dear Mr Mitchell,
I don't understand your response, I'm afraid. There are only about
30 different contracts listed in your original response, and no
doubt many of them were commissioned by the same part of the Home
Office, so the existence of 53 directorates is not relevant.
I simply want an explanation of how you managed to estimate that
the time required to collate the contracts would be over the cost
limit. You must have some idea how long it would take to collate a
single contract, for example, otherwise you could not know that it
would take you over the cost limit to collate the whole lot.
Also, please note that you still have not provided a proper
internal review of your handling of this request and you are now
well outside the guidelines laid down by the ICO.
Yours faithfully,
Ganesh Sittampalam
Ganesh Sittampalam left an annotation (29 September 2009)
23rd September: allocated to case resolution team
From: Information Access
Home Office
19 October 2009
Dear Mr Sittampalam
Please see the attached letter in response to your request for an internal
review about ACPO funding.
Yours sincerely
Steve Kirk
Information Access Team
Information Management Service
Financial and Commercial Group
Ground Floor (NW), Seacole Building
2 Marsham Street
London
SW1P 4DF
show quoted sections
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
Ganesh Sittampalam left an annotation ( 5 February 2010)
The ICO issued a DN for this case a couple of months ago, but seems to have only recently published it:
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/d...
I insisted on one because of the huge delays from the Home Office which I felt needed to be highlighted officially. I was not impressed with the way the ICO handled the case, repeatedly telling me that they were going to close it without providing a proper reason from s50 of the FOI act. Once they produced the decision notice, the "Other matters" section contained a factual inaccuracy, which they repeatedly insisted they were not able to correct, until I threatened them with a report to themselves under the DPA, at which point they magically discovered they could correct it after all.
Aside from that issue, in clauses 31-37 of the "Other matters", they claim that the Home Office's delays in processing the internal review were my fault for not sending the request to their different internal review address. I completely disagree with their conclusion on this, but was given no opportunity by them to respond to their reasoning before they issued the notice.
In particular I initially pointed out that clause 38 of the code of practice "Any written reply from the applicant (including one transmitted by electronic means) expressing dissatisfaction with an authority's response to a request for information should be treated as a complaint", which the Home Office clearly failed to do. The ICO's view is that clause 36 allows authorities to set their own "internal complaints procedure" and that it follows that "complainants can be expected to comply with these". I would say that the effect of clause 38 is to place restrictions on how an internal complaints procedure can operate, and in particular it must include accepting complaints sent as replies to the email giving the original decision.
The ICO argues that it is not "unreasonable or onerous" to require that internal review requests are sent to a specific email address that is different to the normal FOI address or any address the authority sends their emails are from. If they'd asked me, I could have pointed out why it is onerous: whatdotheyknow tries very hard to provide a friendly user interface to requestors, and the admins go to significant effort to gather FOI contact addresses and keep them up to date. If they had to keep track of two different addresses, this would substantially add to the burden, and would add to the complexity of the workflow of the site.
Things to do with this request
- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
- Download a zip file of all correspondence
Ganesh Sittampalam left an annotation (12 August 2009)
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