I complained to Defra about the fact that they took over 5 months to reply to an enquiry from my MP- see here.
I received this reply this week:
Dear Dr Avery,
Thank you for your email of 25 January, regarding your complaint about the time taken to respond to your MP, Tom Pursglove, who had written to Defra on your behalf.
I apologise for the department’s delay in responding to Tom Pursglove’s correspondence. I have investigated this case and the delay in responding was due to several factors, including a period of Ministerial change and a high volume of cases within the correspondence unit.
The correspondence unit is constantly looking to improve the service it provides and is continuously improving processes to prevent this from happening again.
If you have any further questions please let me know.
Best wishes,
[Name]
Service Standards Adjudicator
I’ve responded as follows:
Dear [name]
Thank you for the apology from Defra but the explanation amounts to ‘we were busy’. That might be acceptable were the delay in responding a few days beyond your standards, or maybe, perhaps, for a delay of a few weeks under highly exceptional circumstances. But this was a delay of many months.
As your explanation is not satisfactory please;
-
- have another go at responding in more detail
- confirm that I can approach the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman if I am dissatisfied with your next reply and provide any information that you feel would be useful to me in complaining about this matter
- provide information on the times taken to respond to correspondence by the Defra correspondence unit, by month, since August 2022 in such a way that i can see the length of delay in responding to me in the wider context of Defra performance in replying to correspondence (please treat this as a Freedom of Information request)
Yours sincerely
Dr Mark Avery
[registration_form]