Dear Post Office Limited,

Please provide a copy of the report to the remuneration committee produced by Herbert Smith Freehills which was used to provide assurance to the committee regarding the metrics mentioned on pages 38-41 (Transformation Incentive Scheme) of the annual report and consolidated financial statement 2021/22.

Please provide this information 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 'HSF report to remuneration committee'.

The Post Office has confirmed that they hold the information requested, but are claiming that the information is exempt from disclosure because they consider that section 22 of the Freedom of Information Act applies, stating:
"it is reasonable in all the circumstances for the public authority to delay the provision of information until it is made generally available through publication."

Section 22(1)(b) requires that the decision to publish the information should predate the request under FOI for the exemption to apply. Since the request was made on 20 June 2023, this means that the decision to publish the information was made prior to 20 June 2023 or, at least, 5 weeks ago.

A response to this FOI request made through the whatdotheyknow website would have the effect of making the information supplied available to the public, and would result in the information being widely publicised. Therefore a response to this FOI request would make the information "generally available through publication."

The Post Office states that, "Disclosure of this paper would help promote transparency
and would allow scrutiny of how Post Office spends public money."

The suggestion that by complying with the law i.e. the Freedom of Information Act would divert resource from other areas suggests that considerable resource would be needed, over and above the resource legally required to deal with FOI requests, in releasing this information as a FOI response. Could the Post Office please reconsider this statement and reassess the "additional" resource that would be required in releasing the information compared with the resource required to deal with this internal review and maintain the exemption.

Could the Post Office please reconsider whether, in all the above circumstances, it is reasonable to delay the response to this FOI request beyond the 5 weeks already delayed and whether the information should be made generally available through publication immediately by providing the response to this FOI request, which will have the effect of making the information generally available to the public in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act.

regards
Peter C. Bell

Dear [email address],

According to the guidance from the Information Commissioners Office at

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi....

"You should acknowledge an internal review request and provide a target date for response, which should usually be within 20 working days."

Could you please advise me of the target date for you to respond to my internal review request.

Yours sincerely,

Peter C. Bell