Post Office Annual Accounts - Same Day Liquidity Facility

The request was partially successful.

Dear Post Office Limited,

In your last set of accounts you stated:

We have the following funding agreed with BEIS: a working capital facility of £950 million to 31 March 2021; a further £50 million facility available to provide same day liquidity to 4 April 2020; NSP of £50 million for 2019/20 and 2020/21 respectively; and we also have investment funding of up to £210 million available for the period from April 2018 to March 2020. Investment funding of £168 million was received in 2018/19.

Please provide me with details of the same day liquidity facility including all documents pertaining to the request to BEIS for this facility and the approved facility documentation that should include restrictions on what this amount may be used for. It is noted that POL already have overnight facilities in place for some £400m so I am keen to understand why you needed that additional £50m which you did not require in previous years

I can see no mention of any outstanding balance on this facility in your accounts so could you please provide me with the maximum utilisation figure for this facility during the accounting period 18/19

Yours faithfully,

Tim McCormack

Information Rights Team, Post Office Limited

1 Attachment

Dear Mr McCormack,

Please find an acknowledgement attached to your Freedom of Information
Request.

Regards,

Kerry Moodie

Information Rights Team

Ground Floor

Finsbury Dials

20 Finsbury Street

London EC2Y 9AQ

0333 665 3951

Dear Information Rights Team,

Just to let you know Mr Al Cameron called me last week in response to this FOI and asked me to remove it. After consulting with others who are keen for an official response I have emailed Al and asked him to reply on this website officially. I appreciate that these communications between Al and myself are the cause of the delay in your reply to my FOI so I am happy for you to delay your response to this for another week or so.

Yours sincerely,

Tim McCormack

Dear Information Rights Team,

Could you please advise when I might receive a formal reply to this FOI?

Yours sincerely,

Tim McCormack

Dear Post Office Limited,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Post Office Limited's handling of my FOI request 'Post Office Annual Accounts - Same Day Liquidity Facility'.

You have not had the courtesy to respond to my prompts regarding the late provision of the answer to my FOI. To make it even clearer Mr Cameron in his phone call to me did not even appear to have my questions before him and he certainly did not answer them all. Do I have to take this to the ICO to get a response?

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

Yours faithfully,

Tim McCormack

Tim McCormack left an annotation ()

My submission to the ICO:
I submitted a FOI request to Post Office Ltd on the 25th October via the WhatDoTheyKnow website. On the 16th November I received an email directly from Al Cameron POL CFO secretary asking to arrange a phone call with him with regard their annual accounts. The FOI request was not mentioned. On Wednesday 18th November I spoke with Mr Cameron who answered a few of my questions and towards the end of the conversation he asked if that would serve as an answer to my FOI request on WhatDoTheyKnow. I responded by saying he would still need to answer on WhatDoTheyKnow because others were interested in the response and in addition he hadn't actually answered all my questions in the original FOI. During our conversation it was clear that he did not have a copy of my request before him. I found it extremely strange that the CFO of a large organisation would take the time to call a person like me (of no particular significance) in what appears an attempt to prevent publication of an honest answer to my FOI request on WhatDoTheyKnow. Given that he had taken the trouble to call me I did respond via WhatDoTheyKnow to say that I would give them a week or so over and above the statutoru timeframe for a response but since then POL have been silent. I asked for an Internal Review and received no response. I also stated that I would complain to you the ICO which I am now doing.

Information Rights Team, Post Office Limited

1 Attachment

Dear Mr McCormack,

Please find the response attached to your Freedom of Information request.

Regards,

Kerry Moodie

Information Rights Team

Ground Floor

Finsbury Dials

20 Finsbury Street

London EC2Y 9AQ

0333 665 3951