Hi Unwashed
I followed your advice and dropped a letter off at the Town Hall, Monday morning 21st January, I remind the Town Clerk that all of this needed to be done within 20 working days of my request. I think I should have had some sort of reply before today, Tuesday, 19th February but up to now nothing. Could you please let me know how to proceed, your help is really appreciated.
Your town council are simply ignoring their duty to follow the Freedom of Information Act, but other than the possibility of some adverse press coverage there's really no reason why they should at this stage. It's only the very final stage of the process when the Information Commissioner has got involved and made an order that the council risk any kind of censure, and that's probably a year away, so their best strategy is simply to frustrate you and hope that you'll go away.
It's probably still too early to take a complaint to the Information Commissioner because they need documentary evidence that the local process has been utterly exhausted. You have evidence of all of your communication to the council and their failure to respond to the January 21 letter is strong evidence that the process has ended, but the Information Commissioner will want to see that you have gone that extra mile and really bent over backwards to give the council time to respond.
You now need to send a further letter to the town clerk asking again for her response to your letter of 21 January and stating that if you have not received an appropriate response by Friday 1 March you will without further notice make formal complaint to the Information Commissioner. I know that's a frustratingly long time to give her, but you'll come over uber-reasonable to the IC and that really helps.
Once the complaint is sent to the IC you still have to engage with the council if they ever get back to you, and the IC will also give the council every opportunity to dig up some generic exemption which you'll have to argue against, but the council aren't likely to take you seriously until the IC is involved so that's the next stage.
Making the complaint to the IC is simple, you can do it by e-mail, but you will need copies of all of the correspondence.
