Freedom of Information requests

Dear Sir or Madam

I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your FOI request dated 28
September 2008.

We will provide a response in due course however should you require any
additional information or assistance in the interim please contact me on
the details listed.

Regards

Lee Gardiner
Corporate Records Manager
Business Support Services
Legal & Democratic Division
Wigan Council

Tel: 8427 (01942 488427)
Fax: 2093 (01942 827093)
Email: [email address]

Town Hall, Library Street, Wigan, WN1 1YN

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Dear T Thomas

I am emailing to respond to your request to Wigan Council.

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Dear T Thomas

I am emailing to respond to your FOI request to Wigan Council. I
apologise for the truncated message recently sent - I hit the wrong key
by mistake.

1) How many requests for information under the act has the council
received?

We have logged 785 requests on our database since 2005.

This may not be the actual total as there is sometimes ambiguity about
whether some correspondence is a request for information or not. Some
requests are likely to have been dealt with by individual staff members
and we have no current way of capturing data about them.

2) How many have times has the council failed to respond within the
statutory 20 day period?

Of those requests logged on our database, 24 have been sent outside the
20 day period. I believe that more requests than this have in fact been
sent outside the 20 day period, as some FOI requests may not have been
recognised as such, and it is possible that not all requests have been
logged.

I have not included in these figures the number of requests which have
"stalled" - where I have requested clarification from the applicant and
it has not been received. I have also not included requests where the
applicant claimed to have sent a request which was not received - for
example, a request was recently sent via WhatDoTheyKnow but never
actually received. A colleague responded to a reminder, but the original
was not received so I did not record it as such.

I hope the information is clear and answers your request in full. If you
are unhappy with any aspect of this response, an independent senior
officer will review this decision. Please let me know if you would like
to arrange this.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner, who is the
regulator for Freedom of Information. His website is
www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk, and his helpline number is 01625
545745. His staff may ask you to exhaust our internal complaints
procedure if you choose to complain to his office now.

Regards

Tim Turner
Data Protection / FOI Officer
Business Support Services
Wigan Council

External Tel: 01942 488354
External Fax: 01942 827093
Email address: [email address]
Postal address: Town Hall, Library Street, Wigan, WN1 IYN

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