Line to take - LTT47 - Date of receipt of request, working days and variations to time for compliance

• FOI/EIR: FOI
• Section/Regulation: s10
• Issue: Working days and variations to time for compliance
• Source: FOI (Time for Compliance) Regulations; Information Tribunal
• Details: Statutory Instrument 2004 No. 3363; Berend / LBRT (12 July 2007)
• Related Lines to Take: n/a
• Related Documents: FOI (Time for Compliance) Regulations, Awareness Guidance 11, EA/2006/0049 & EA/2006/0050 (Berend)
• Contact: LA
• Date: 21/08/2007
• Policy Reference: LTT47
• © Copyright Information Commissioner's Office, re-used with permission
• Original source linked from here: LTT

Line to take

Working days exclude days which are bank holidays anywhere within the UK. The time allowed for compliance with a request may be varied in accordance with the “Time for Compliance Regulations”

Further Information

Working days

Section 10 of the Act defines a working day as “any day other than a Saturday, a Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a day which is a bank holiday under the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 in any part of the United Kingdom.”

This means that a day which is a bank holiday in any of the four nations of the UK is a non-working day for the purposes of the FoIA. Therefore a day which is say, only a bank holiday in Northern Ireland but not in England, Scotland or Wales (such as St Patrick’s Day) will count as a non-working day in all countries covered by the FoIA.

Where offices close for privilege days in addition to bank holidays, these do not count as non-working days for the purposes of the FoIA.

In Berend v ICO & London Borough of Richmond upon Thames (LBRT) the Information Tribunal considered the length of a working day. It found that “working day” in the context of FOI referred to the definition given above, and that “There is no definition within the Act as to the length of a day and in the absence of any such definition, we are satisfied that a day ends at midnight”

Time for Compliance Regulations (Statutory Instrument 2004 No. 3364)

In addition to the extensions to time allowed for the collection of fees and for consideration of the Public Interest Test for qualified exemptions, the Time for Compliance Regulations provide details of when the normal 20 working day requirement can be varied.

In all cases, whether or not a variation to the normal 20 working day limit is allowed, the Act requires a public authority to respond “promptly”

The variations allowed by the Time for Compliance Regulations are as follows:

Variations that may be applied without prior reference to the Information Commissioner

Schools

The twentieth working day following the date of receipt can be read to mean the earliest of

• The twentieth working days following the date of receipt, excluding any day which is not a “school day”, or
• The sixtieth working day following the date of receipt

A “school day” means any day on which there is a session (i.e. any day in which pupils are in attendance).

Effectively school holidays and “inset” or training days on which no pupils are in attendance, are not counted as working days.

It should be noted that the Time for Compliance Regulations do not extend to schools in Northern Ireland.

Archives

Where the request is received by an appropriate records authority or by a person at a place of deposit appointed under section 4(1) of the Public Records Act 1958 and the request relates to information

• That may be contained in a public record; and
• That has not been designated as open information for the purposes of section 66 of the FoIA.

then the time limit can be extended to the thirtieth working day following the date of receipt. Effectively 30 working days are allowed for requests for transferred public records that haven’t been designated as open information, so that the records authority has time to consult with the responsible or transferring public authority who may need to consider if any of the information is exempt.

Variations that may only be applied at the discretion of the Information Commissioner

The following variations to the time limit are only available at the discretion of the Information Commissioner. They will only apply if a public authority has, within twenty working days following the date of receipt of the request, applied to the Commissioner for an extension of the time in which it must respond to a request, and the Commissioner has agreed to extend that time.

It is unlikely that actual requests for extensions would be dealt with by FOI Complaints Case Officers, as this issue would arise at a stage prior to a valid section 50 complaint being received. However, Case Officers may need to retrospectively consider whether this requirement has been met when deciding if a time breach has occurred.

Armed Forces

Where a request for information cannot be met without obtaining information (recorded or unrecorded) from any individual (whether or not a member of the armed forces) who is actively involved in an operation, or in preparation for an operation, of the armed forces then the time for a response can be extended at the discretion of the information Commissioner.

The Commissioner may extend the time for a response to one he considers reasonable in all the circumstances, but not exceeding the sixtieth day following the date of receipt of the request.

Information held outside the UK

Where a request cannot be complied with without obtaining information held outside the UK, and because of this the public authority is unable to comply within the normal time limit, then the time for a response can be extended at the discretion of the information Commissioner.

The Commissioner may, at his discretion, extend the time allowed for a response to one he considers reasonable in all the circumstances, but not exceeding the sixtieth day following receipt of the request.