FOI and NLC (26/01/15)

Here is my latest letter to North Lanarkshire Council's Freedom of Information Co-ordinator regarding the publication of an important report to the Council's Corporate Management Team from August 2005.

I can honestly say I've never seen anything like this in my life and if North Lanarkshire was in the business of making cars, for example, I imagine they would be coming off the production line without engines or steering wheels. 

And to think the Council's most senior and highly paid officials received £2 million worth of 'good' performance bonuses between 2002 and 2014.

What a joke and a scandalous use of public money, if you ask me.

Dear Neil

Scottish Information Commissioner Decision - Reference: 201402173

Thank you for your letter dated 21 January 2015.

Please note that I do still expect a response to my FOI request dated 15 December 2104 as many of the points raised are not affected by the disclosure ordered by the Scottish Information Commissioner. As the Council has already exceeded the time limits for responding to my 15 December 2014 request I obviously expect this to be answered by return and without any further delay.

In relation to the CMT report and its Appendices can you please clarify the following points:

1 If Appendix 2 should really be labelled as Appendix 3, then where is the original Appendix 2? 

2 The original CMT report had seven Appendices, in which case why has the Council provided only six Appendices 1, 3 (2), 4, 5, 6 and 7 - by any logical reckoning one of the Appendices must still be missing?

3 If Appendix 4 was just wrongly annotated as Appendix 5, why has the Council been claiming for all these months that one of these documents was physically missing from its filing system? 

I will now study these various documents carefully, but have to say I am distinctly unimpressed at the Council's time-wasting, incompetent, and unprofessional behaviour which I may now raise separately with the Scottish Information Commissioner.

I look forward to your reply and please respond separately to my outstanding FOI request from 15 December 2014.

Kind regards

Mark Irvine