Dear Sir or Madam,

Please can you provide me with a list of all geographic phone numbers which a person could dial to reach the DWP.

For each number please indicate the non-geographic equivalent (if any) and please indicate the name of the office, department, branch or service line the number is associated with.

By geographic phone numbers I mean phone numbers with an area code.

By non-geographic phone numbers I mean phone numbers starting with 0870, 0845, 0800 etc that do not have an area code.

For the avoidance of doubt your response should include:

- numbers of offices, branches and

- numbers of Jobcentres

- numbers of general helplines

- numbers of helplines for specific benefits/issues

- numbers that the DWP does not normally make available to the public

For the avoidance of doubt your response need not include:

- mobile phone numbers of DWP mobiles allocated to one employee/official only

- internal extension numbers associated with one employee/official only

I include an example to show the type of information the list should contain the example may not be accurate:

1. Milton Keynes Jobcentre Plus 01908 455500 (non-geo: 0845 606 0234)

Yours faithfully,

John Cross

Dear Sirs,
It appears that the response to my Freedom of Information Act request is overdue.

Yours sincerely,

John Cross

Dear Sirs,

Your last email suggested you were relying on Section 10(3) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to extend the deadline for answering my request.

Please be aware however that this subsection does not affect the time by which any notice under section 17(1) of the Act must be given.

There is therefore have no time extension from supplying me with a notice that specifies the exemptions on which you are relying and why the exemption applies (if that would not otherwise be apparent). It would appear that you were legally required to provide me with such a notice on or before 9 October 2009.

Please provide me with this notice.

Yours sincerely,

John Cross

Dear Sir or Madam,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Work and Pensions' handling of my FOI request 'geographic phone numbers'.

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

In particular please look at the following issues:

(1) Your wrote
"DWP do not hold the information in the format you have requested."

This is not relevant, what matters is whether the information is held. You must also provide the information in the format I expressed a preference for wherever practical.[See section 7 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000]

(2) Your wrote:

"All DWP public contact numbers are available via Direct Gov, telephone directories and in leaflets published by the Department, dependent on the service you wish to access."

ICO Awareness Guidance Note 6 states:

"Public authorities are under a duty, set out in section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act - Awareness Guidance No 6 Act, to “provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect
the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made requests for information.” This means that there should be no possibility of applicants
being left in any doubt as to how they can obtain the information which they want."

(3) "This exemption protects information which, if released, would prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs."

It appears you wish to rely on the Section 36 exemption but this exemption depends on "the reasonable opinion of a qualified person". Please can you tell me who the qualified person was in this case.

Yours faithfully,

John Cross

Dear Sirs
Thank you for your email.

Please could you send me the letter or email or other record containing the opinion of the qualified person in relation to my request.

Also I could not open the word document included with the attached document, it appears it is a link to a local C drive. Please could you send this again.

thank you

John Cross