Decision Notices

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3 March 2010

Case Reference Number IRQ0299499

Dear Mr Davis

Thank you for your correspondence dated 2 March 2010.

Your request is being dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.  We will respond by 31 March 2010 which is 20
working days from the day after we received your request.

If you wish to add further information to your case please reply to this
email, being careful not to amend the information in the ‘subject’
field. This will ensure that the information is added directly to your
case. However, please be aware that this is an automated process; the
information will not be read by a member of our staff until your case is
allocated to a request handler.

Yours sincerely

Adam Stevens

Assistant Internal Compliance Manager.

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Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545 700 Fax: 01625 524 510 Web: www.ico.gov.uk

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16th March 2010

Case Reference Number IRQ0299499

Dear Mr Davies

I write with reference to your request dated 2 March 2010 concerning
statistical information around our complaints handling.  As you are aware
this request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA).

Request

Your request asked:

For each calendar month from January 2005 to the month recent month
you hold data on please state the following.

i) what the number of outstanding complaints under either the FOI
Act or the Environmental Information Regulations Act was at the end
of that month?

ii) how many formal decision notices were issued in that month?

iii) how many complaints were closed through informal discussion
between the parties?

iv) of those closed through informal discussion in how many cases
was additional information supplied to the applicant?

v) how many cases were you informed of where a decision notice was
being appealed to the Information Tribunal?

Note: If the inclusion of part iv of this question means that it
would breach the time limit of work that could be done on this
question I am content for that section to be dropped.

Information held

Attached are two PDF’s with the information requested displayed for your
questions. i, ii, iii, and v.  There is some clarification for each point
which should assist you and I should clarify that the office produces its
statistical information in financial years rather than calendar years. For
ease of reference we have used the same numbering as in your original
request.

i) The caseload table “caseload at the end of each
financial year”shows the FOI caseload at the end of each financial year,
with the figure which was published in the annual report for that year but
in the next column is any adjustments which were made to this figure after
publication. The caseload up until financial year 09/10 used to be
calculated using a manual process; therefore there were instances where
classification of cases took place after this process had been completed
meaning that cases were included that should have been marked for deletion
and cases that were valid were not included. The adjusted figure takes
these cases into account.

I do note that your request asks for numbers of caseload outstanding at
the end of each month for the period that you have specified.  However,
our casework management system is a live system and therefore is ever
changing depending on the stage that each case is at.  Some of the
criteria around a case will remain fixed regardless such as receipt date,
however, case state will change through the life cycle of a case.
Therefore, we are unable to run report retrospectively to extract the
information you are seeking regarding outstanding cases at the end of each
month.  Therefore, we do not hold the information for this aspect of your
request.

The additional report – B055b shows the caseload for FOI (and also DP)
for this financial year on a month by month basis, up until Feb 2010.

ii) The decision notice table shows decision notices served
broken down by month from Jan 2005 to February 2010 and also the number
served for each financial year.

iii)    The informal resolution outcomes table shows the number of
cases for each financial year with an informal resolution outcome as at
11.3.10. The outcome of a cases is changeable i.e. it can be re-opened and
therefore the outcome following the reopening may be different to the
original closure. This report is likely to produce different figures
especially for the current financial year each time it is run.      

iv)     Unfortunately we are not able to provide you with the
information you have requested for this aspect of your request. I will
explain in more detail below why this is the case, but in brief, section
12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) makes clear that a public
authority (such as the Information Commissioner’s Office – the ICO) is
not obliged to comply with an FOIA request if the authority estimates that
the cost of complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate
limit'. The ‘appropriate limit’ for the ICO, as determined in the
‘Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004’ is £450. We have determined that £450 would equate
to 18 hours work. 

Whilst the information you have requested is likely to sit within our
electronic case management system, this system is not set up to easily
provide us with the type of information you have requested. Generally
speaking this is not the sort of information we collect or need for our
own day to day business purposes.

To clarify further, under section 50 of the FOIA individuals can ask the
Information Commissioner to decide whether a request for information to a
public authority has been dealt with in accordance with the requirements
of Part 1 of the FOIA.  Since January 2005 the details of all section 50
complaints received by the ICO (known as ‘cases’) have been put onto
on our electronic case management system. The correspondence is scanned
onto the system and an electronic record is created for every case, every
complainant and every ‘complained about’ public authority.

The system allows us to search for the cases we have dealt with in a
number of different ways, such as by the unique reference number the case
was given, the name and address of the person who contacted us and the
name of any public authority that has been complained about. We can also
search for cases on the basis of the broad nature of the complaint, but we
can only search on a limited number of fixed criteria which are structured
around the main sections of the FOIA.

Unfortunately, we are unable to conduct an electronic search specifically
for complaints where the complainant has been provided additional
information in case which has been informally resolved. 

In order to find this information we would need to individually check
every case for every complaint we had received from 1^st January 2005
which was informally resolved. It is clear from the numbers provided in
response to question (iii) to search each case would take us above the
cost of compliance limit.  I note from your e-mail that should this be
the case you wished to drop this aspect of your request.  However, if in
light of this clarification you would like to narrow the scope of your
request such as a shorter timeframe or interest in a particular public
authority we may be in a position to provide the information.  I should
point out that any reformulated request you may wish to make to the ICO
will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20 working day time limit
will begin again.

v)     The appeals table shows the number of appeals that were received
by the Information Tribunal for each financial year. This does not take
into account the outcome of the appeal.    

Appeals procedure

If you are dissatisfied with the response you have received and wish to
request a review of our decision or make a complaint about how your
request has been handled you should write to the Internal Compliance Team
at the address below or e-mail [2][email address]

Your request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request
received after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the
Commissioner.

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation.  To make such an application, please write
to the Case Reception Team, at the address below or visit the
‘Complaints’ section of our website to make a Freedom of Information
Act or Environmental Information Regulations complaint online.

 

A copy of our review procedure is also attached.

Yours sincerely

Charlotte Powell

Internal Compliance Manager

Yours sincerely

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Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545 700 Fax: 01625 524 510 Web: www.ico.gov.uk

References

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2. mailto:[email address]