Dear Department for Exiting the European Union,

Please provide records of departmental expenditure on social media marketing campaigns in each financial year from 2013/14 to 2017/18. These records should include a breakdown of expenditure on each social media platform (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube.)

Please also provide copies of internal reports, memos and/or briefings which relate to the effectiveness of social media campaigns, as a whole or individually, during this period.

Yours faithfully,

Mark Wilding

Dear Department for Exiting the European Union,

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Exiting the European Union's handling of my FOI request 'Social media expenditure'.

I note from your response that you are refusing part one of my request because "disclosure is likely to prejudice the department’s commercial interests". You state that disclosure is "likely to lead to behavioural shifts in pricing among the provider’s competitors, causing unpredictable adjustments in the market for the provision of the services".

The costs of social media marketing campaigns are charged at standard rates set by social media platforms for reaching a specified number of that platform's users (within a given range). It is highly unlikely that disclosure of amounts spent by the department will reveal commercial information that is not already held by a given platform's competitors and the risk of causing adjustments in the market is therefore negligible.

I am therefore asking you to review your decision to refuse the first part of my request.

Yours faithfully,

Mark Wilding