The Information Commissioner's Office is still overloaded with a backlog of Freedom of Information Act complaints.
They still have not allocated a Case Officer to the complaint about the Home Office and their refusal to disclose the geographic or time / date details about where and when the supposedly temporary, strictly time and location limited Terrorism Act 2000 Section 44 stop and search Authorisations are, or are not, in effect.
Please accept my apologies for the delays you will experience prior to this case being allocated. I will write to you again every twelve weeks to inform you of the status of your complaint in relation to Team 2's queue and we will notify you when a case worker is assigned to it.
This means that they assume that there is now going to be a minimum 12 week delay before they even start looking into the details of the complaint.
This is not acceptable - it is over 3 years now since the Freedom of Information Act 2000 came fully into force, and the number of actual FOIA requests being made has gone down since then.
See also these Parliamentary Written Answers on the backlog of cases at the ICO
Commons Hansard - Written Answers - 14 May 2008 : Column 1571W
[...]
At 31 March 2008, the number of cases awaiting investigation by the Information Commissioner were 1,363 for freedom of information casework and 1,237 for data protection casework.
Additionally, due to the volume of cases referred to the Information Commissioner under data protection, there were 2,250 cases awaiting classification as at 31 March 2008. Of these cases, it is estimated that approximately 60 per cent. would be resolved within 30 calendar days and 85 per cent. within 90 calendar days.
[...]
Between April 2007 and March 2008 the average length of time from receipt to commencement of investigation was 69 days for the Freedom of Information Act cases and 30 days for Data Protection Act cases. The average length of time to close an investigation once commenced, was 182 days from for Freedom of Information Act cases and 45 days for Data Protection Act cases.
These disproportionate delays, both by Central Government Departments and by the Information Commissioner's Office etc. are make a mockery of any claims that the Freedom of Information Act has somehow lead to any effective change towards public transparency and openness in the British bureaucratic state
Email from the ICO:
From: FOI-Enquiries@ico.gsi.gov.uk
To: [email address]
Date: Thu, 15 May 2008
* Party Name15th May 2008
CASE REFERENCE NUMBER FSnnnnnnnn
Dear [name]
I am writing from the Information Commissioner's Office about the complaint that you have made against the Home Office.
I am writing on behalf of the Education, Justice and Police Team [Team 2] to inform you that regretfully your case is still waiting to be allocated to a case officer. Until your case is allocated we are not able to provide any substantive information about the progress or content of your case.
The office has been dealing with a very high volume of complaints since January 2005. This has created a significant back log of cases which are being addressed as quickly as possible, though in many instances resolving those cases is proving to be a very lengthy process. We appreciate that this situation is both undesirable and extremely frustrating. However, we would like to assure you that every possible effort is being made to alleviate the delays and we will allocate your case once it gets to the front of our queue.
Please accept my apologies for the delays you will experience prior to this case being allocated. I will write to you again every twelve weeks to inform you of the status of your complaint in relation to Team 2's queue and we will notify you when a case worker is assigned to it.
You can respond by writing to the address below or by email to mail@ico.gsi.gov.uk[1] quoting reference FSnnnnnnnn.
Yours sincerely
David McNeil - Complaints Officer(Team 2 - Education, Justice and Police.)
Yours sincerely
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