Thank you for contacting the Information Commissioner’s Office. We confirm
that we have received your correspondence.

If you have made a request for information held by the ICO we will contact
you as soon as possible if we need any further information to enable us to
answer your request. If we don't need any further information we will
respond to you within our published, and statutory, service levels. For
more information please visit:

[1]https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...

If you have raised a new information rights concern - we aim to send you
an initial response and case reference number within 30 days.

If you are concerned about the way an organisation is handling your
personal information, we will not usually look into it unless you have
raised it with the organisation first. For more information please see our
webpage ‘raising a concern with an organisation’ (go to our homepage and
follow the link ‘for the public’). You can also call the number below.

If you have requested advice - we aim to respond within 14 days. 

If your correspondence relates to an existing case - we will add it to
your case and consider it on allocation to a case officer.

Copied correspondence - we do not respond to correspondence that has been
copied to us.

For more information about our services, please see our webpage ‘Service
standards and what to expect' (go to our homepage and follow the links for
‘Report a concern’ and ‘Service standards and what to expect'). You can
also call the number below.

For information about what we do with personal data see our [2]privacy
notice.

If there is anything you would like to discuss with us, please call our
helpline on 0303 123 1113.

Yours sincerely

The Information Commissioner’s Office

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References

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4. http://www.twitter.com/ICOnews

31 August 2022

Our reference: IC-189140-T8W8 

Dear J Roberts,

Thank you for your recent request for information. We received your
request on 31 August 2022. Your request will be allocated to an
Information Access Officer who will contact you under the reference number
above in due course.
Under statutory timeframes our response to your freedom of information
request is due by 28 September 2022.
If you have any queries about this information request you may email us,
quoting our reference number in the subject line. Please note that
Information Access Officers are only able to address information requests
to ICO; they are unable to assist with complaints to ICO, or to provide
general advice about the legislation we oversee, as this work is done by
other ICO departments.  
Our privacy notice explains what we do with the personal data you provide
to us when you make an information request:
https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice...
Thank you for your interest in the work of the Information Commissioner's
Office.
Yours sincerely,
Information Access Team
Information Commissioner’s Office 
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 0303 123 1113 [1]ico.org.uk [2]twitter.com/iconews
Please consider the environment before printing this email

Please be aware we are often asked for copies of the correspondence we
exchange with third parties. We are subject to all of the laws we deal
with, including the data protection laws and the Freedom of Information
Act 2000. You can read about these on our website ([3]www.ico.org.uk).
Please say whether you consider any of the information you send us is
confidential. You should also say why. We will withhold information where
there is a good reason to do so.
For information about what we do with personal data see our privacy notice
at [4]www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice
 

References

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1. https://ico.org.uk/
2. https://twitter.com/iconews
3. https://www.ico.org.uk/
4. https://www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice

6 September 2022 

Case Reference: IC-189140-T8W8 

Dear J. Roberts

Request for information

On 31 August 2022 you made a request about the following blog on the ICO's
website:

[1]Director’s Update – Looking at the future of Freedom of Information
(FOI) through ICO25 | ICO

You asked us to:

1) Please provide the criteria that you currently use to prioritise cases.

2) Please provide the number of requests/complaints you prioritised in
April, May and June of this year.

We have dealt with your request for information in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act (2000).

Response

We hold some information that falls under the scope of your request.
However, to extract all of this information and respond to your request in
its entirety would exceed the cost limit set out by section 12 of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Section 12 of the FOIA makes clear that a public authority is not obliged
to comply with an FOIA request if the authority estimates that the cost of
complying with the request would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’. The
Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004 stipulates that the ‘appropriate limit’ for the ICO is
£450. We have determined that £450 would equate to 18 hours work.

To cover the period specified in part 2) of your request we would need to
manually check over 4000 FOI complaint cases. Information relating to the
prioritisation of FOI complaint cases is not recorded in a central
location and cannot be electronically extracted from our case management
system. To locate the number of cases given priority we would be required
to look at the case documents and activities on all our FOI complaint
cases received in the date range you have requested to locate evidence
that a case had been prioritised.

It is likely to take a minimum of 1 minute per case to locate the date a
case officer was allocated to investigate the complaint and to check
relevant documents and activities for evidence of a case being
prioritised, in many cases it is likely to take significantly longer than
this depending on the amount of information held on a case. To review all
cases received in this time period would equate to over 60 hours of work.
As a result we are refusing part 2 of your request as it would breach the
cost limits set out at section 12 of the FOIA to attempt to provide the
information you are seeking in its entirety.

Advice and Assistance

The blog you have linked to refers to the ICO’s work as regulator rather
than the way we process information requests made to the ICO. As FOIA is
applicant and motive blind, requests for information made to the ICO in
accordance with this legislation are processed in chronological order of
receipt.

In relation to FOI complaint cases, if a complainant asks that their
complaint be prioritised, a manager will consider their reasons for
requesting prioritisation. However, in the interests of fairness, given
the number of complaints received, requests for prioritisation will only
be accepted in exceptional circumstances and on a case by case basis.

Further to this, the ICO may decide to treat a complaint as high priority
in the following circumstances:

•       High profile issues (as advised by senior managers)

•       Complaints submitted by elected representatives

•       Complaints that are the subject of media coverage

As mentioned, information relating to the prioritisation of FOI complaint
cases is not recorded in a central location and cannot be electronically
extracted from our case management system. Therefore cases must be checked
individually to determine whether or not they have been prioritised.

It is also worth noting that, as mentioned in the blog you linked to, we
plan to publish updated criteria relating to prioritisation later this
year:

“Firstly, we will be looking at prioritising requests where we consider
that there is a clear public interest in moving them up the queue, so they
are resolved more quickly. We already do this in some cases, but plan to
publish updated criteria later this year to reflect this expanded
approach”

In relation to current prioritisation, we have given some consideration as
to how you could reframe your request to bring it within the cost limits.
We could consider requests for cases received within a more limited
timeframe, e.g. how many cases received in a particular month were
prioritised. We could also consider requests for how many cases were
prioritised during a particular period according to other criteria such as
public authority or nature of complaint. However, if a large number of
cases fall within scope of any subsequent request about prioritisation of
cases, it is possible Section 12 may be triggered again.

Furthermore, any information disclosed would only demonstrate a snapshot
of the situation and may not be a true reflection of how we prioritise
cases overall.  

As you may already be aware, we do publish information about our FOI
complaints work, for example:

[2]Complaints and concerns data sets | ICO

Although these data sets do not record prioritisation, they do include
date received and completed, as well as examples of criteria you could use
to reframe your request as recommended above.

This concludes our response to your request.

Next steps

Please come back to us in the first instance if you would like a
clarification or a review of the way your request has been handled. If you
remain dissatisfied you can then request a review of our decision under
the FOIA or make a complaint about how your request has been handled by
writing to the Information Access Team at the address below or email
[3][ICO request email].

Your request for internal review should be submitted to us within 40
working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request received
after this time will only be considered at the discretion of the
Commissioner.

If having exhausted the review process you are not content that your
request or review has been dealt with correctly, you have a further right
of appeal to this office in our capacity as the statutory complaint
handler under the legislation. To make such an application, please write
to our FOI Complaints & Appeals Department at the address below or visit
our website if you wish to make a complaint under the Freedom of
Information Act.

A copy of our review procedure can be accessed from our website [4]here.

Your rights

Our [5]privacy notice explains what we do with the personal data you
provide to us and what your rights are, with a specific entry, for
example, for [6]an information requester. Our retention policy can be
found [7]here.

Yours sincerely,

Information Access Team

Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 0303 123 1113 [8]ico.org.uk [9]twitter.com/iconews
Please consider the environment before printing this email

Please be aware we are often asked for copies of the correspondence we
exchange with third parties. We are subject to all of the laws we deal
with, including the data protection laws and the Freedom of Information
Act 2000. You can read about these on our website ([10]www.ico.org.uk).
Please say whether you consider any of the information you send us is
confidential. You should also say why. We will withhold information where
there is a good reason to do so.
For information about what we do with personal data see our privacy notice
at [11]www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice

References

Visible links
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2. https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/our-inf...
3. mailto:[ICO request email]
4. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
5. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice/
6. https://ico.org.uk/global/privacy-notice...
7. https://ico.org.uk/media/about-the-ico/p...
8. https://ico.org.uk/
9. https://twitter.com/iconews
10. https://www.ico.org.uk/
11. https://www.ico.org.uk/privacy-notice