Dear Department of Health and Social Care,

I refer to your reply to FoI 1515519 in which you have stated that the DHSC will be responsible for evaluating the above PC.

Please provide me with a copy of the marking scheme/evaluation process which will be used to assess the quality of responses.

Yours faithfully,

Joy Warren

Dear Department of Health and Social Care,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Department of Health and Social Care's handling of my FOI request 'Evaluation of the Public Consultation on Water Fluoridation for the North-East of England'.
I requested a copy of the marking scheme/evaluation process which will be used to assess the quality of responses having established from an earlier FoI request that the DHSC would be evaluating the responses.

The earlier FoI request also established that the DHSC did not have a marking scheme. However, having established that the DHSC and no other department would be evaluating the responses, it seemed logical that the DHSC and no other department would have a marking scheme and that is why I made a fresh request.

I object to being given the same reply when it is patently obvious that the DHSC/OHID have a marking scheme if the Department is to evaluate responses.

In order to evaluate responses to the above Public Consultation, they need to be examined by bench-marking them against certain criteria. Without a marking scheme, this would be impossible. The Public Consultation was due to have been concluded on 17th June and a marking scheme should have been finalised by then.

It's unbelievable that a marking scheme does not exist. This implies that there would not be any examination of responses, no evaluation and no lessons learned by OHID. In other words, the result of the Public Consultation appears to be a foregone conclusion and no matter what anyone says in their responses, the decision will be to forge ahead with the proposal.

I really do hope that the DHSC is not going to be so dishonest. Public Consultations are an opportunity for policy to be challenged and amended or to be thoroughly overhauled.

It is impossible to evaluate responses without a marking scheme. So, where is it?

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

Yours faithfully,

Joy Warren