Dear Prime Minister's Office,

It has been reported that a total of £2.6m has been spent on the new Downing Street briefing room. Please provide an itemised bill of materials and labour showing how the money was apportioned.

Yours faithfully,

S Hill

Dear Prime Minister's Office,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Prime Minister's Office's handling of my FOI request 'Itemised accounts for Downing Street briefing room'.

Please can you:
1. conduct an internal review and provide an explanation as to why my freedom of information request has not been responded to within the statutory time frame;
2. respond to my freedom of information request; and
3. explain how you will revise your processes such that freedom of information requests will receive a response within the statutory time frame in the future.

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

Yours faithfully,

S Hill

Dear Prime Minister's Office,

Thank you for your limited response to my Freedom of Information Act request.

My request was made on March 16th 2021, was initially ignored and (following my request for an internal review) the Cabinet Office have extended the deadline for a full response twice and the deadline has now been set as June 14th 2021.

The reasoning given by the Cabinet Office is that the requested information is exempt under Section 22 of the act, as it is intended for future publication. No publication date has been provided, nor has any assurance been given that the deadline will not be extended again, possibly indefinitely through repeated extensions.

Section 22 exempts information only if:
(a) the information is held by the public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date (whether determined or not),
(b) the information was already held with a view to such publication at the time when the request for information was made, and
(c) it is reasonable in all the circumstances that the information should be withheld from disclosure until the date referred to in paragraph (a).

Please provide:
1. The date when a determination was made that the requested information would be published.
2. The anticipated date of publication.
3. A written assessment detailing the reasoning as to why withholding this information is reasonable and outweighs the public interest provided by disclosing the information (as described by Section 2(b) of the act, upon which you are relying to exempt this information).
4. An assurance that there will be no further extensions to the deadline for a full response to this Freedom of Information Act request.
5. A written report of the internal review that was conducted following my April 16th request for such, detailing why my request was not originally responded to promptly, and steps that have since been taken to improve the Cabinet Offices processes to ensure that this does not recur with future Freedom of Information Act requests.

With regards to (3), I would like to remind the Cabinet Office that I am simply requesting information as to how public funds have been used. There appear to be no national security concerns and it seems inconceivable that it could be considered to be in the public interest to deny the public the opportunity to understand how the elected government has spent funds which were raised from them through taxation.

I hope the Cabinet Office would agree that maintaining democracy to the highest standard is in the public interest, and that transparency is an integral part of that. Therefore, political considerations, such as concerns regarding the public's perception of the government's spending, cannot form part of a "public interest" test, as this would erode democracy.

Yours faithfully,

S Hill

Dear Prime Minister's Office,

1. When is the Cabinet Office's forthcoming annual report and audited accounts expected to be published?
2. Please can you confirm that this will contain an itemised bill of materials and labour showing how the money was apportioned?

Yours faithfully,

S Hill