NE compliance with information requests

Dear NE

Thank you for your response on 12 November to my email of 2 November which you have chosen to treat as a complaint.

Your response is detailed and clear, but still unsatisfactory and so I wish this matter to be escalated to the next stage, Stage 2, with this email now forming part of the material to be considered, please.

I am grateful for the clarity of your response.

What you have sent me demonstrates, and you accept, that whereas 40% of FoI/EIR requests overall are dealt with in 0-15 days by NE, only 25% of my requests are dealt with in such a timely manner. When it comes to requests dealt with in the last 5 working days of the 20-day period, 45% of all requests are answered this late in the process whereas 58% of my requests are dealt with in such a relatively tardy manner, And whereas 15% of all requests are dealt with after the 20-day deadline, 16% of my requests are so treated.

So the data you provided me demonstrate two interesting things:

• NE usually answers such requests in the last 5 days of the 20-day period or later (sometimes very much later)
• my requests are very much less likely to be dealt with in the 0-15 day period, more likely to be dealt with in the 16-20day period and a bit more likely to be dealt with after (sometimes well after) the 20-day period.

My view is that this shows that NE is not responding in a suitably timely manner in general, and my own requests are being handled in an even less timely manner.

Here’s another piece of analysis on my own requests and their responses. Of the 14 requests of mine that received responses in the 16-20 day period they received responses as follows; 1 on day 16, 2 on day 17, 1 on day 18, 5 on day 19 and 5 on day 20.  This demonstrates a considerable clumping of the responses towards the very end of the deadline. I do not have the data for others’ requests but you do.  I will conjecture that the responses to me are more clumped towards the very end of the 16-20 day time window (as well as being more likely to fall into this window in the first place) than the pattern displayed by all responses. I’d be interested to see that breakdown to the extent that I will happily pay £10 to a charity of your choice (excepting the GWCT) if you provide those data and I am wrong in my conjecture.

Moreover, and just for illustration, if one looks at the 5 responses which NE sent me on day 20 of the period, they were received at the following times: 13:37; 14:25; 15:24; 15:43 and 16:31. So, not only are my responses much more likely to be in the 16-20 day window, and very clumped towards the last two days of that 5-day window but those which fall on day 20 are invariably sent in the latter half of the day and mostly sent in the last quarter of the working day.

Your defence for NE’s general tardiness in replying and your apparent increased tardiness in responding to me can be summarised as ‘it’s difficult’ but no doubt the regulations on this matter took that into account when deciding on a 20-day deadline (not target as it appears to have become in NE) for responses. Also, I invite you to look at the requests which have received responses towards the end of the 20-day period (as I have done) and reconsider whether they actually are complex – many certainly are not (and some are). I’ll be prepared to share my views on that with you at a later date but no doubt that will form part of the Stage 2 of your own internal assessment which I now request.

Yours sincerely and with renewed thanks for the detailed response,

Dr Mark Avery

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