Complaints and review process
Internal reviews - FOI and EIR
We will carry out an internal review of a request in all cases where a requester:
- disagrees with our interpretation of their request
- believes we hold more information than we have disclosed
- believes we have withheld information without proper justification
- the timeframe for response has been exceeded
The internal review shall not be limited to the first decision. We will provide a new decision based on all available evidence that is relevant to the date of the request.
Where possible, the review shall be carried out by:
- someone within the relevant Service Area, who did not deal with the original request, and
- a more senior member of staff
We will conduct a review within 20 working days. In exceptional circumstances, this time limit can be extended to 40 working days.
We will advise requesters of their right to escalate their complaint to the Information Commissioner’s Office should they remain dissatisfied once the internal review process is completed.
We will fully comply with all requests from the Information Commissioner’s Office to investigate, or review, our handling of FOI and EIR requests.
Complaints about subject access requests
We will consider all complaints about the handling of subject access requests as corporate complaints in accordance with our complaints policy.
Training and awareness
We will provide mandatory annual training to all staff covering requests for information under FOI, EIR and UK GDPR.