Freedom of Information

Environment Food and Rural Affairs written question – answered at on 6 February 2012.

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Photo of Jon Ashworth Jon Ashworth Opposition Whip (Commons)

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether her Department publishes on its website its response to each request it receives under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; whether the response is published in the same part of its website on each occasion; and what the average time taken is between responding to a request and the information being made available on the website.

Photo of Richard Benyon Richard Benyon The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

DEFRA does not publish individual responses to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR). However, a disclosure log summarising DEFRA's responses to FOIA and EIR requests is published on DEFRA's website at:

http://archive.defra.gov.uk/corporate/policy/opengov/defra/available/inforelease/index.htm

The disclosure log provides a summary of DEFRA's responses in each quarter of the calendar year and visitors to the site are invited to contact the DEFRA Library if they want to see a particular response.

DEFRA's information rights team aim to update the disclosure log every quarter of the calendar year and the site is currently up to date to the end of September 2011 and will be updated again with cases dealt with in the fourth quarter of 2011 in early February. An approximate 20% increase in the number of requests made to DEFRA in the past year and a decision to prioritise other work led to delays in updating the site over the past 12 months.

Visitors to the site are invited to contact the DEFRA Library if they want to see a particular response. For responses not yet listed in the disclosure log, requests can be made direct to DEFRA's Information Rights team by emailing:

informationrights@defra.gsi.gov.uk

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