That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

Ok I was wondering whether we could identify changes that were made or applied for that could have been as a result of J Smith's judgment in April.

If a bank had applied for changes prior to April and then again after April that could imply they did, if you see what I mean.

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

The Decision Notice has gon up on the ICO's site.

http://www.ico.gov.uk/tools_and_reso...s/2008_12.aspx

Still waiting to here from the OFT.

[Amethyst]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

Excellent.

For the FSA FOI I received the standard acknowledgement so should have response by 20th January.

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

The OFT have responded, it seems, on the 35th day.

I've not seen it as I can't access the file at the moment but hopefully Ame can post her copy up.

The response includes a 'Board paper' which sounds interesting. In the past, freedom of information requests have been on the agenda of their monthly board meetings according to the minutes.

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

The Board paper was a summary of the minutes from march 2006 in which the Board were informed of the decision for a threshold on credit card defualt charges.

Interestingly it makes reference to the threshold approach lasting 3 years.

''The Board was advised that the OFT will be publishing a statement on default
charges by the end of March, proposing a threshold. Although this approach is
not seen as a permanent or ideal solution (expected to last around 3 years), it

should improve the working of the market.''

It also mentioned a protest.

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

This is the OFT's response and as we suspected, it is in essence a quotation for the information available to us. The catch is have to stay below the £600 threshold which equates to 24 man hours to retrieve the stuff.

We have to give careful consideration as to what we want although I'd like to have a punt at upping the threshold on account of the OFT's failings to deal with the request properly.

[Amethyst]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

Response to the Section 21 Waiver - FOI request - varying terms during waiver - FOI - FSA waiver - Ten applications to vary charges terms - Legal Beagles

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

This is a draft but in essence, due to the limitations placed upon us by the exemption in section 12, due largely to the OFT's appalling record keeping, I've decided to plump for the information requested in parts 3 and 10 of the original request which would shed at least some light on what elements the credit card issuers included in their costings for administering defaults and what elements the OFT included in calculating the £12 charge threshold.



Dear Sirs

Thank you for your letter of 15 January.

As per the Information Commission's direction and your subsequent estimate under s12 of the Freedom of Information Act applicable to the information outstanding, I wish to refine my request as follows:


3. Please supply the documents outlining advice/recommendations provided to you or others in senior management about agreeing to a £12 investigation limit, redacting any information that you feel is exempt.

10. Please provide any models used by the OFT to calculate that £12 should be the threshold for action. This is not a request for any information supplied by the credit card lenders to populate the model.

In your letter you suggest that in order to retrieve the information requested in part 3 it would require a staff member a total of 19 hours (13 for paper files and 6 for electronic files) at a cost of £475.

Your estimate for supplying the information requested in part 10 (formally part 11 in the original request) is not specific as, of course, your estimate of 19 hours at £475 includes supplying parts 8&9 which I no longer require.

I believe there would be a further and substantial reduction in the time required to retrieve the information in part 10 as the work involved in locating the information for part 3 will have been duplicated in your estimate. So rather than looking through all the files and electrinic data twice, one would only need to look once. This would be further simplified as the information for both parts 3 and 10 are closely related.

If, for some reason, the cost of complying with my refined request exceeds the £600 limit, I would remind you that under the act you have no obligation to withold information if I am prepared to pay for you to retieve it.

Yours sincerely.




:

[righty]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

I suspect that should be 'alleged' appalling record keeping EXE

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

No righty it's truly crap. They've said as much themselves.

[righty]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

I know that's why I stated 'allegedly'

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

I've made a few alterations to the OFT response and whacked it off.

Dear Sirs

Thank you for your letter of 15 January.

As per the Information Commission's direction and your subsequent estimate under s12 of the Freedom of Information Act applicable to the information outstanding, I wish to refine my request as follows:

3. Please supply the documents outlining advice/recommendations provided to you or others in senior management about agreeing to a £12 investigation limit, redacting any information that you feel is exempt.

10. Please provide any models used by the OFT to calculate that £12 should be the threshold for action. This is not a request for any information supplied by the credit card lenders to populate the model.

In your letter you suggest that in order to retrieve the information requested in part 3 it would require a staff member a total of 19 hours (13 for paper files and 6 for electronic files) at a cost of £475.

Your estimate for supplying the information requested in part 10 (formally part 11 in the original request) is not specific as, of course, your estimate of 19 hours at £475 includes supplying parts 8&9 which I no longer require.

More significantly, the time required to search and retrieve the information for both the requests above would be substantially less as there would be a high degree of duplication in each individual estimate in man hours as a member of your staff would only need to look through the files once to satisfy both requests. This would be further simplified as the information for both parts 3 and 10 are closely related.

I trust you find this satisfactory.

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

Acknowledgement of the refined request.

I happened upon another FoIA request to the OFT on complaints about Debt Collection Agencies made late last year.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/reques...#incoming-9021

It's an interesting site that publishes FoIA requests

[EXC]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

It seems that unbeknown to each other, Bob Egerton has also been pursuing an FoIA request with the OFT for essentially the same information on the credit card threshold limit.

The interesting thing is the OFT haven't used the cost exemption on his as they were with mine.

[Tools]

Re: That Wild Billy Letter - FoIA request to OFT and ICO decision

Maybe they think hes Mr Scott too lol.