The clear winner of the FoI speed race was the DEL who acknowledged the response the next day, asked for a postal address, and sent the information pretty much straight away! Some of the other departments still haven’t even acknowledged the response, and no-one else yet has sent the information. The speed of the DEL is even more striking as it turns out they weren’t even the primary originator of the contract I enquired about. It had been a LEDU contract which they had persuaded the DEL had agreed to pay half the costs of!
Of the ones who have responded, DCAL have been the least helpful so far, informing me approximately a week after their initial acknowledgement that the information I requested would cost too much to obtain. I’ve tried to narrow this down, but I’m not entirely convinced they properly understood the original request.
I’ll try to keep this table up to date as the departments respond.
The request date for all departments was 4th October, so 20 working days takes us to 1st November.
| Dept | Acknowledgement | Information |
|---|---|---|
| DEL | 5th October | 8th October |
| DHSSPS | 6th October | 26th October |
| DRD | – | 28th October |
| DETI | 6th October | 28th October |
| DOE | 11th October | 24th October (**) |
| DFP | 12th October | 25th October (**) |
| DARD | 14th October | 1st November |
| DCAL | 4th October | – |
| DENI | 6th October | – |
| OFMDFM | 30th October(*) | – |
| DSD | 9th November (*) | – |
* The most unexpected response to date has been from the OFMDFM who, due to an email glitch, didn’t get my original request, but who contacted me in relation to discovering my request via this post! This was followed a few days later by a similar email from the DSD!
** These departments gathered the information, but there was so much that I agreed to go see it, rather than have them send it.