Dear Post Office Limited,

Please provide a copy of any guidance and/or rules which are provided to Post Office prosecutors and/or investigators when criminal prosecutions are being brought against Post Office subpostmasters and/or other staff for theft, fraud, false accounting or similar offences.

If the guidance and/or rules have changed over the last 10 years, please could you indicate what changes have been made.

Please provide the reply in electronic form.

Yours faithfully,

Peter C. Bell

Dear Post Office Limited,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Post Office Limited's handling of my FOI request 'Guidance to Post Office prosecutors / investigators'.

Whilst you have claimed that you estimate that the cost of complying with this request will exceed the appropriate limit and have refused the FOI request under the section 12 exemption, you do not appear to have provided the assistance to the requester required by section 16 FOI.

From your response I am unable to assess whether your estimate is a reasonable estimate or not. Nor am I able, from the information you have provided, to determine how I may be able to reframe or restrict my request in order for it to fall below the appropriate limit.

When making your estimate, you are required to calculate a reasonable estimate based on the specific circumstances of the case. A reasonable estimate is one that is sensible, reasonable and supported by cogent evidence.

If you have carried out such an estimate, then I would suggest that you are in possession of information that would assist me in reframing or restricting my request so that the cost of complying with that request could fall below the appropriate limit. Could you please communicate that information to me so that I can consider whether I could reframe or restrict my request accordingly.

Please indicate clearly how you have arrived at your estimate and supply a copy of the cogent evidence that supports the calculation of that estimate.

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

Yours faithfully,

Peter C. Bell

Dear Information Rights Team,

Thank you for your response to my request for an internal review.

I have to say that I am surprised that your search method in replying to this request was simply a search of an email archive for particular search terms. I would have hoped that the department responsible for issuing guidance to prosecutors would have a rather more advanced method of tracking versions of guidance issued to prosecutors, however, if that is your version control system, I understand your difficulties.

Your response has been very helpful and I will formulate a number of follow-up FOI requests to try and assist you further in identifying relevant information which you can locate and identify within the statutory limit.

Yours sincerely,

Peter C. Bell