Date of letter in iCase 407685

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Lewisham Homes should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Lewisham Homes,

In your response letter to iCase 410803 ( https://goo.gl/sUgFz6 ), dated 27th July 2017, you make reference to your letter in iCase 407685 ( https://goo.gl/gFo3Ki ); you state the following:

____________________
'We acknowledge our exemption letter to you was received later than the required timeframe. We apologise for the delay. Your letter was dated 14th July 2017 in error this should have been dated 19th July 2017. I am sorry this error occurred and will make sure letters are checked before sending in future.'
____________________

This statement was written in response to my complaint that you appear to have written the letter on the 14th, then seemingly not sent it to me until the 19th of July ( https://goo.gl/uWb612 ).

While your response quoted above says that the letter 'should have been dated 19th July 2017', this stops short of addressing whether or not the letter was indeed actually written on the 14th of July, which I still strongly suspect it probably was....... It's perfectly possible that you wrote it on the 14th July, then now retrospectively feel like you 'should have dated it the 19th of July' as this would make it less apparent that you'd had the letter sitting around for five days before sending it, in breach of the requirement to respond 'promptly'/'as soon as reasonably practicable' to an FOI request (which is what you were treating the request as, at the time [it still may yet turn out to have been a valid FOI request]).

>>>>>>>>>>>>

As such, I am now writing to request the following information, under The Freedom of Information Act:

You sent me a written response to iCase 407685, dated 14th of July.
https://goo.gl/gFo3Ki
****According to your records, was this letter written on the 14th of July and if not, on what date was that letter written?****

If you do not have a record of this, then instead, please tell me what is the earliest date that you have a record of this letter having existed/drafted.

It's my expectation that you will have written records of the data I'm asking for. Some obvious places to look might be as follows:
* On the computer of the (undeclared) individual who composed the letter (eg dates on electronic files).
* The email account of the individual who composed the letter, plus the email accounts of anyone the letter was sent on to (I'm assuming it was checked by other parties, prior to sending).
[NB, I'm not limiting the scope to these sources - the individual who wrote it will probably be best positioned to know where a record of this data might be found].

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

There's no requirement for me to justify the need for an FOI request, however:
It often feels like Lewisham Homes does not have any respect for Section 10 (1) of the The Freedom of Information Act:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000...
which stipulates the following:
'a public authority must comply with section 1(1) promptly'
........ It appears like Lewisham Homes habitually waits until the last days of the separate requirement (under section 10) to respond within 20 working days - even when the response had been prepared well prior to the release date.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The data requested herein is extremely simple in its nature: It does not require Lewisham Homes to go around to multiple departments, nor to compile data from multiple sources; you simply need to take a quick look at someone's email history.
Given this, I hope that you will on this occasion respect for Section 10 (1) of the The Freedom of Information Act and respond as soon as is reasonably practicable.

Yours faithfully,

Mr. Williams

Customer Relations Team, Lewisham Homes

Thank you for contacting the Customer Relations Team at Lewisham Homes. We
aim to respond to all emails within 2 working days.

 

If your email is about a repair, please call our contact centre on 0800
028 2 028.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Customer Relations Team

DISCLAIMER

Lewisham Homes is the trading name of Lewisham Homes Limited, which
is a company registered in England and Wales. Our registered office is
Old Town Hall, Catford Road, London, SE6 4RU.

Registered in England and Wales Company Number: 5887410

This email and its attachments may be confidential and are intended
solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views
or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily represent those of the Lewisham Homes.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email and its attachments,
you must take no action based upon them, nor must you copy or show them
to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received
this email in error.

Although this email and any attachment are believed to be free of any
virus or other defect which might affect any computer or system into
which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility of the
recipient to ensure that they are virus free and no responsibility is
accepted by any member of the Lewisham Homes for any loss or damage from
receipt or use thereof.

Customer Relations Team, Lewisham Homes

Dear Mr Williams

Lewisham Homes - Freedom of Information request

Our Reference: 411927
Due date: 29 August 2017
________________________________________

Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your recent request.

Your request is being considered and you will receive a response within the statutory timescale of 20 working-days, subject to the application of any exemptions. Where consideration is being given to exemptions the 20 working-day timescale may be extended to a period considered reasonable depending on the nature and circumstances of your request. In such cases you will be notified and, where possible, a revised time-scale will be indicated. In all cases we shall attempt to deal with your request at the earliest opportunity.

There may be a fee payable for the retrieval, collation and provision of the information requested where the request exceeds the statutory limit or where disbursements exceed £10. In such cases you will be informed in writing and your request will be suspended until we receive payment from you or your request is modified and/or reduced.

Your request may require either full or partial transfer to another public authority. You will be informed if your request is transferred.

If we are unable to provide you with the information requested we will notify you of this together with the reason(s) why and details of how you may appeal (if appropriate).

Kind Regards,

Jana Blahova

Senior Customer Relations Officer
T: 0203 889 0646

Old Town Hall, Catford Road, London SE6 4RU www.lewishamhomes.org.uk

show quoted sections

Customer Relations Team, Lewisham Homes

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Williams

Please find attached response to your FOI request ref: 411927.

Kind Regards

Jana Blahova

Senior Customer Relations Officer
T: 0203 889 0646

Old Town Hall, Catford Road, London SE6 4RU
www.lewishamhomes.org.uk

Dear Lewisham Homes,

Thanks for your response and for now being honest about this particular point.

I am writing to request an internal review of Lewisham Homes's response to FOI iCase 411927.
The reason I'm asking for an Internal Review is as follows:

From your response, it sounds as though you simply needed to ask the person who drafted the original letter to look on their computer/email account and check a date. I suggest this should perhaps have taken about 30 seconds.
Say ten minutes to write a response letter, then perhaps a day to faff around having the letter 'approved'.
.... So, I figure it should have taken no more than about 1 day, 10 mins and 30 seconds to actually prepare this response.
Add to that 2 days at the start for your logging the case and sending it to the correct person... I figure this response should have been sent out within 4 days at the extreme outset.

Contrary to that, it's for some reason taken you TWO ENTIRE WEEKS to provide this response.

Given the legal requirement to respond 'as soon as reasonably practicable', in accordance with ICO guidelines, will you please justify why it's taken two entire weeks before you bothered to reply, when all you needed to do was quickly check a date on a digital file?

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

Yours faithfully,

Mr. Williams

Customer Relations Team, Lewisham Homes

Thank you for contacting the Customer Relations Team at Lewisham Homes. We
aim to respond to all emails within 2 working days.

 

If your email is about a repair, please call our contact centre on 0800
028 2 028.

 

Kind Regards,

 

Customer Relations Team

DISCLAIMER

Lewisham Homes is the trading name of Lewisham Homes Limited, which
is a company registered in England and Wales. Our registered office is
Old Town Hall, Catford Road, London, SE6 4RU.

Registered in England and Wales Company Number: 5887410

This email and its attachments may be confidential and are intended
solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views
or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not
necessarily represent those of the Lewisham Homes.

If you are not the intended recipient of this email and its attachments,
you must take no action based upon them, nor must you copy or show them
to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received
this email in error.

Although this email and any attachment are believed to be free of any
virus or other defect which might affect any computer or system into
which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility of the
recipient to ensure that they are virus free and no responsibility is
accepted by any member of the Lewisham Homes for any loss or damage from
receipt or use thereof.

Customer Relations Team, Lewisham Homes

Dear Mr Williams

Thank you for your email.

This was forwarded to Colin Burns, Audit Risk and Compliance Manager, who will carry out the internal review of your FOI request ref: 411927.

Your response will be send on or before 12 September 2017.

Kind Regards

Jana Blahova

Senior Customer Relations Officer
T: 0203 889 0646

Old Town Hall, Catford Road, London SE6 4RU
www.lewishamhomes.org.uk