Dear Sir or Madam,

An FoI request to Bedfordshire Police (see
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/re...)
has resulted in a response that states they have no current policy
on acting and temporary promotion, having declared their existing
policy obselete w.e.f. February 2009. They go on to say:

"Regarding the state of the current Policy, I can confirm that
Bedfordshire Police do hold some related information in the form of
a draft Policy. However, we are waiting Home Office guidelines for
approval. Currently the Home Office are about to issue new National
guidelines on acting and temporary ranks and we will not write a
new policy until we receive this guidance. Therefore, Bedfordshire
Police consider that this information is exempt from disclosure
under Section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as
information intended for future publication. It is anticipated that
this policy and subsequent procedure will be available within the
next few months."

As the law on acting and temporary promotions is governed by
Regulation 27 Police Regs. 2003, and the Determinations contained
in Annexes I and J to that Regulation, Home Office guidance cannot
change the legal position, and PNB Joint Circular 08/04 (Advisory)
at http://www.lge.gov.uk/lge/aio/413360 set out agreement on all
outstanding matters except for one: the interpretation of
Regulation 24(2), which was the subject of an unequivocal decision
by HH Judge Platts in Liverpool County Court in 2007, in the case
of Gill v CC Merseyside.

Hence, my request is for all documents relating to (and, if
appropriate, a copy of) the Home Office guidance on temporary
promotion and temporary salary ("acting") to which Bedfordshire
Police refers.

Yours faithfully,

William Old

Dear Sir or Madam,

Are you in a position to acknowledge receipt?

Yours sincerely,

William Old

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have to say that, having heard nothing at all from you since
making the request, it's going to be very annoying if you
subsequently claim not to have received any of this correspondence.

I look forward to receiving your substantive reply by 11 May 2009.

Yours sincerely,

William Old

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please respond by return stating why you have not responded to my
Freedom of Information request dated 8 April 2009, and when you
expect to respond.

Yours sincerely,

William Old

Reference : T6276/9

Thank you for your e-mail enquiry of 08/04/2009 1:48:05 PM

A reply is attached.

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Dear Mr Old

Please see attached response.

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Dear CTS Public enquiry account 1,

Thank you for your response, but as you have sent it in a closed,
proprietary format that cannot easily be viewed by users of
non-Microsoft operating systems, I cannot read it.

As you are a Government department, you should be using an open,
non-proprietary format such as Rich Text Format (.rtf), or using a
proprietary format for which reader software is freely available
for users of all technical computing platforms, not just Microsoft
Windows - for example, Portable Document Format (.pdf), owned by
the Adobe Corporation.

Yours sincerely,

William Old

Dear Mr Old

Thank you for your e-mail. I have copied a reply below, please let us
know if this is the reply you require. If not, perhaps you could advise
us accordingly.

[FOI #10281 email]
Mr William Old

Reference: T6276/9

Dear Mr Old,

Thank you for your e-mail of 8 April 2008 in which you ask for all
documents relating to temporary promotion and temporary salary for
police officers.

I regret that we have been unable to send you a full response to your
request within 20 working days, as required by the Freedom of
Information Act. This is because we are liaising with colleagues and
this is taking longer than expected. I would like to apologise for this
delay and for any inconvenience that this may cause. I would like to
assure you that we are dealing with your request as a matter of urgency,
and that we will send you a full reply as soon as possible. We now aim
to send you a full reply by the 15 June 2009.

If you have any queries about the handling of your information request
in the meantime then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,

Lorna Morrison
Police Productivity Unit

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.

Dear CTS Public enquiry account 1,

Please see my earlier comment about the closed, proprietary format
in which you have supplied the requested information - a format
that cannot easily be viewed by users of non-Microsoft operating
systems.

As already stated:
As you are a Government department, you should be using an open,
non-proprietary format such as Rich Text Format (.rtf), or using a
proprietary format for which reader software is freely available
for users of all technical computing platforms, not just Microsoft
Windows - for example, Portable Document Format .pdf), owned by the
Adobe Corporation.

I'm assuming that H M Government is not actually financially
supported in any way by the Microsoft Corporation (that is, other
than the millions of pounds paid to Microsoft from public funds for
"Office" licences!), but you should not be supporting Microsoft's
continued abuse of its monopoly position by restricting the supply
by Government of public information to Word ".doc" format,
especially as this company has already been fined over one
*billion* Euros for such criminal behaviour by the European Court
of First Instance...

http://www.out-law.com/page-4690

... and flagrantly continues to do so:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/609559/microsoft-...

Yours sincerely,

William Old