In the last six months the Home Office has only managed to respond to half the Freedom of Information requests it has received on time.
The department has been on a slippery slope over the last two years with the number of responses being answered on time declining severely.
This includes the number of requests it has also been granted extensions over the 20 working day limit set for answering FOIs.
But the recent quarter’s performance has not been the worst the Department has performed in the last few months.
The latest figures should be worrying for the Home Office as it means during the first six months of the year they have only managed to respond to 51% of all requests on time. Well below the required 85% asked by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
The 50% on time response rate at the beginning of the year earned the Theresa May’s charges a period of monitoring from the Information Commissioner, which ends in three days.
The department managed to answer more requests on time in Q2 last year despite receiving more requests than they did in the latest round of figures.
This time round the department received the third highest number of requests for information, behind the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice, who the figures were published by.
For all departments of state 88% of requests were answered on time during the period.
Here’s a breakdown of how all government departments responded to requests ‘in time’ during the second quarter of the year.
