MHRA Internal communications relating to FOIA Request 23/105

Our Ref: FOI 23/266

Dear CHP Gillow,

RE: REQUEST UNDER THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

Thank you for your enquiry which we received on 11th April.

I confirm that your request is now being handled under the Freedom of Information Act and you should receive a reply within 20 working days from our date of receipt.

If you need to contact us again about this request, please quote the reference number above.

Please be aware that we publish FOIs replies and these are redacted and are located on our website at the following link below.
https://www.gov.uk/government/collection...

Kind Regards,

MHRA Customer Experience Centre
Communications and engagement team
Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency
10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU Telephone 020 3080 6000

show quoted sections

Dear CHP Gillow

I have recently joined the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory
Agency as the Freedom of Information Manager. I understand that you have
contacted the Information Commissioner to advise of delays in the handling
of requests you have made to the MHRA, and that the Information
Commissioner has asked us to respond to two delayed requests by today,
June 20^th. These are FOI 23/105 and FOI 23/266. I have sent this email to
the webpages for both requests.

I am writing to advise you that we will not be able to issue the responses
to FOI 23/105 and FOI 23/266 today as we had hoped. I have made enquiries
and can confirm that we are working to complete these responses and issue
them to you within the next 7 days. I am sorry for this further delay, and
I have written to the Information Commissioner’s Case Officer to advise
them of this.

I would also like to take this opportunity to invite you to discuss your
requests with me. I can see that some of your more recent requests are
related to the handling of your earlier requests; while I understand this
is a way to explore the handling of the previous requests, I note that you
have also asked for internal reviews for a number of requests including
those where information was disclosed to you. I appreciate that you may
wish to continue to pursue both avenues, but I wondered if a further
discussion about the types of information you are interested in would be
of assistance to you.

If this would be helpful for you, you are welcome to contact me in the
first instance via the usual MHRA Customer Service email address; if you
would like to speak, please let me know and we can make arrangements.
Separately to this, I will contact you with reference numbers for the
internal reviews in due course.

Yours sincerely

Lou Lander

Freedom of Information Manager

MHRA Customer Experience Centre

Communications and engagement team

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU
Telephone 020 3080 6000

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Dear CHP Gillow

I am writing to provide the response to your request FOI/23 266, which
asked:

“I would be grateful if you could provide me with copies of all internal
communications held by MHRA relating to FOIA request 23/105”

I sincerely apologise for the delay in responding to your request.  

Please find attached a document containing the requested information. I
can advise that:

• In accordance with section 1(4) of the FOIA, the information disclosed
contains the communications held at the time that your request was
made, 11 April 2023.
• Names of staff have been withheld under section 40(2) for personal
information. No other information has been withheld from the
correspondence. As the request was made through the public website, I
have not removed the name on the requests.
• Where they are included in the chains of email, I have disclosed the
mailbox names and email addresses for three public-facing mailboxes. I
have also disclosed references to the ‘FOI policy’ mailbox and email
address, however, please be aware that this mailbox is no longer used
for public correspondence. (Enquiries regarding FOI should be directed
to MHRA Customer Services.)
• The disclosure document contains a number of email ‘chains’. These are
presented in date order according to the date of the most recent email
in each chain. I have provided the complete chains, and this does mean
that some individual emails appear in the disclosure document a number
of times. The chains are as follows:

◦ PDF pages 1-2: 07 February 2023 (containing your original request)
◦ PDF pages 3,4,5: 07 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 6-8: 13 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 9-11: 13 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 12-16: 15 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 17-22: 20 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 23-28: 24 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 29-35: 27 February 2023
◦ PDF pages 36-44: 03 April 2023

• Please note that, while I regret the delay that has occurred in the
processing of request FOI/23 105, the discussions contained in this
disclosure reflect considerations in the earlier stages of request
handling. I can confirm that since the time of these discussions, we
have retrieved and are reviewing information in response to the
questions in FOI/23 105, and I am currently working to provide this
response to you.
• I understand that a focus of your enquiry was to determine the reasons
for processing two requests made separately under one reference
number. This is not addressed in detail in the correspondence, but I
can advise that requests made separately by a requester may be brought
together under one reference number for processing when they relate to
the same overarching subject. This ‘merging’ for processing is
separate to and does not affect whether requests may be ‘aggregated’
for the purposes of section 12.

I include your appeal rights below, as you have the right to seek an
internal review of this decision. You are also welcome to contact me with
any queries in the first instance.

I will provide the Information Commissioner with a copy of this response
for their records.

Yours sincerely

Lou Lander

Freedom of Information Manager

MHRA Customer Experience Centre

Communications and engagement team

Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency

10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London E14 4PU

DISCLAIMER This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential.
If you are not the intended recipient, any reading, printing, storage,
disclosure, copying or any other action taken in respect of this email is
prohibited and may be unlawful. If you are not the intended recipient,
please notify the sender immediately by using the reply function and then
permanently delete what you have received. Incoming and outgoing email
messages are routinely monitored for compliance with the Department of
Health's policy on the use of electronic communications. For more
information on the Department of Health's email policy, click
[1]DHTermsAndConditions

References

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