Public interest provisions for exclusive arrangements with Bailii and Courtel

HM Courts and Tribunals Service did not have the information requested.

Dear Her Majesty’s Courts Service,

I have previously made two FoI requests for information regarding HMCTS's arrangements with Bailli and Courtel. You can view those requests online at WhatDoTheyKnow:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

In both of these, I asked the question "Is the information supplied to BAILII/Courtel also available to other publishers on the same basis?"

The answers, respectively were:

"No, the information is available free of charge via the BAILII website. We have scheduled this requirement to be re-tendered in 2012."

and

"The Licence between Courtel and HMCTS is currently exclusive"

However, section 14 of The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005 states that:

"(1) Subject to paragraph (2), a public sector body shall not enter into an exclusive arrangement with any person including an applicant.

(2) A public sector body may, where necessary for the provision of a service in the public interest, enter into an exclusive arrangement."

Given that you do, indeed, have an exclusive arrangement with both Bailii and Courtel, I would like to know how this can be justified.

Specifically, my request is as follows:

Please supply me with copies of any internal correspondence or minutes of meetings where the need to comply with section 14.2 of The Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2005 with respect to the contracts with Bailii and Courtel was discussed, together with any supporting documentation which was used to support the decision to award (or permit to continue) these exclusive arrangements.

Since this request relates to two separate contracts with two separate organisations, you may prefer to treat this as two separate requests. Also, if the requested information is only available (or only readily available) for one of the contracts, then please supply that independently of the other.

Yours faithfully,

Mark Goodge

Data Access & Compliance Unit, HM Courts and Tribunals Service

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Goodge,

Please see the attached letter regarding your recent Freedom of
Information request.

Yours sincerely,

The Data Access & Compliance Unit

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Dear Data Access & Compliance Unit,

Is there any chance of an answer to this? You've now had more than double the statutory maximum time in which to respond.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Goodge

Dear Data Access & Compliance Unit,

Your response to this request is now well overdue, even taking into account the fact that you were unable to deal with it initially due to an administrative error. Please could you acknowledge this follow up and let me know when I can expect to receive the full response.

Yours sincerely,

Mark Goodge

Dear Her Majesty’s Courts Service,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Her Majesty’s Courts Service's handling of my FOI request 'Public interest provisions for exclusive arrangements with Bailii and Courtel'.

I have, as yet, had no response to my request, despite it being considerably overdue. Nor have I even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement to my previous requests for a status update.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pu...

Yours faithfully,

Mark Goodge

Mark Goodge left an annotation ()

They actually sent the response now back to my other FoI request: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in... (see final response).

This isn't really helpful as it leaves this request in limbo, as I can't update the status to show that it's complete.