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Steve Elibank made this Freedom of Information request to University of Southampton
The request was partially successful.
From: Steve Elibank
19 March 2010
Dear Sir or Madam,
Please could you provide me with copies of all the advice and
discussions held by the University of Southampton or provided to
you in relation to the way you mark Freedom of Information requests
to warn applicants of your rights under Copyright and Intellectual
Property law.
Please provide any documents from 1.1.04 to the current date. I
appreciate that this may include advice and discussion that has now
been overtaken by newer advice and discussions.
Note that you have previously ignored this request from another
individual, but I shall be expecting an answer.
Yours faithfully,
Steve Elibank
From: Steve Elibank
21 April 2010
Dear Sir/Madam;
You have failed to respond to my Freedom of Information request
within the statutory deadline, and are thus breaking the law.
If I do not receive a full response within 24hrs, a complaint will
be lodged with the Information Commissioner.
Steve Elibank
From: Foi
University of Southampton
21 April 2010
Dear Sir,
We refer to your emails of 19 March 2010 and 21 April 2010.
You assert in your email of 21 April: “You have failed to respond to my Freedom of Information request within the statutory deadline, and are thus breaking the law.” This is incorrect: the statutory deadline is 20 working days following the date of receipt. Working days are Monday to Friday, and the University was closed on 6 and 7 April as well as on the bank holidays of 2 and 5 April. The 20-working-day deadline therefore expires tomorrow (22 April).
You assert in your email of 19 March: “Note that you have previously ignored this request from another individual, but I shall be expecting an answer.”. This is incorrect: our response to that individual, available elsewhere on this site [FN1], was quite unambiguous and the substantive text of that response is set out below, not only for your convenience but also as a substantive response to your request:
“The University does not hold any recorded advice or discussions with regard to marking of responses to FOI requests. Informal discussions were held within Legal Services (the University's in-house legal department) with regard to how to respond to Freedom of Information requests where the University's response would be published directly on the Internet. It was felt appropriate to remind applicants who intended to publish the University's response to their request on the Internet that their entitlement is only to the information contained in the response and not to any material protected by intellectual property laws.”
Yours faithfully,
FOI ([email address]<mailto:[email address]>)
[FN1] http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co...
From: Steve Elibank
21 April 2010
Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for your response. I wish to request an Internal Review
of your handling of this matter, due partly to the brusque and
snide tone of your communication, which goes against the spirit of
the Freedom of Information Act (particularly the section explicitly
requiring public authorities to be helpful to applicants).
The other part is that this response WAS late. Section 10(1) of the
Act required you to respond within 20 working days, while Section
10(6) clearly states, "'working day' means any day other than a
Saturday, a Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a day which is a
bank holiday."
I have no idea why you chose to close your university office on
April 6th-7th, but they were not bank holidays under the Banking
and Financial Dealings Act 1971, and so are not excluded from the
timescale for responding to Freedom of Information requests.
The third element of my grounds for insisting on an Internal Review
is that you either deliberately falsely represented this to me, or
did not know that "office closed" days still count towards the time
limit - neither situation is acceptable.
Please reply to this message to confirm that you are working on an
Internal Review.
Yours sincerely,
Steve Elibank
From: Steve Elibank
22 April 2010
Dear Sir/Madam;
You have not yet responded to my request for an Internal Review on
this matter, which I dispatched yesterday? Please reply as soon as
possible to confirm that you are working on the matter.
Steve Elibank
From: Steve Elibank
30 April 2010
Dear Sir/Madam;
You have not yet responded to my request for an Internal Review on
this matter, which I dispatched April 21st? Please reply as soon as
possible to confirm that you are working on the matter.
Steve Elibank
From: Foi
University of Southampton
4 May 2010
Dear Sir,
We refer to your request dated 21 April 2010 for an Internal Review. We confirm that the matter is being reviewed: we expect the review to be completed at the latest by 21 May and the results of the review will be communicated to you on completion.
Yours faithfully,
FOI
From: Steve Elibank
21 May 2010
Dear Foi,
On April 21st, I requested an Internal Review over the handling of
my request. As per guidelines from the Information Commissioner,
you should have either completed the Review within 20 working days
or let me know otherwise.
Therefore, please give me an update on progress.
Steve Elibank
From: Steve Elibank
24 May 2010
Dear University of Southampton,
You said that you would be in touch by May 21st to give me an
update on the Internal Review I requested. It is now May 24th. What
is going on?
Yours faithfully,
Steve Elibank
From: Halliday B.H.E.
University of Southampton
24 May 2010
I will be out of the office until 27 May 2010. I will only be checking my e-mails intermittently. In an emergency I can be contacted on 07970 231023.
Best wishes
Barbara Halliday
From: Foi
University of Southampton
24 May 2010
Dear Sir,
Thank you for your emails dated 21 May and today. Unfortunately, the internal review is taking a little longer than expected to complete because of unduly heavy workloads. We will be in touch as soon as the review is complete.
Yours faithfully,
FOI
From: Steve Elibank
24 May 2010
Dear Foi,
Thank you for letting me know. Please inform me of your target date
for completion.
Yours sincerely,
Steve Elibank
From: Foi
University of Southampton
25 May 2010
Dear Mr. Elibank,
Thank you for your email. We are looking to complete by Wednesday of next week (2 June).
Yours sincerely,
FOI
From: Steve Elibank
2 June 2010
Dear Foi,
You should have informed me about my Internal Review by today (2nd
June)?
Steve Elibank
From: Foi
University of Southampton
3 June 2010
Dear Mr. Elibank,
Thank you for your email of yesterday and apologies for not getting back to you. We will have completed our review tomorrow and will be in touch with you then.
Yours sincerely,
FOI
From: Foi
University of Southampton
4 June 2010
Dear Mr. Elibank,
We are writing further to our email of yesterday to let you know that the internal review has now been completed and is attached hereto in PDF format.
Yours sincerely,
FOI
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