Dealing with delays during the Coronavirus pandemic

[mdeuk]

[continued from discussion on volunteers@]

We've had a number of public bodies contact us to ask that we advise requestors of potential delays to FOI/EIR requests being handled owing to the Coronavirus pandemic.

It is possible that there is legislation due to be passed which may change the statutory timescales for responding to a request; however, in the meantime, it is perhaps prudent that we put in place some guidance for our users, especially as Alaveteli will still be treating requests as being expected to receive a reply within 20 working days and will therefore be sending auto-notifications which could cause some confusion.

[mdeuk]

Banner now in place on WDTK, using text from @MattK1234:

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is having an impact on response times to requests. Please see this information from the <a href="https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/news-and-events/icos-blog-on-its-information-rights-work/" alt="Link to guidance from the Information Commissioner's Office (opens in a new window)" target="_blank">Information Commissioner's Office</a>, and the <a href="http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/home/News/20200313.aspx" alt="Link to guidance from the Scottish Information Commissioner (opens in a new window)" target="_blank">Scottish Information Commissioner</a>. Please <a href="/help/contact">contact us</a> if you have any questions.

[mdeuk]

From the Scotland perspective this is being covered off by technical means under #672 - once this is implemented we may wish to formalise things by way of a help page.

[garethrees]

I've updated the banner to reflect that we've now published a blog post going in to further detail.

It starts with the text that was previously in the banner.

[MyfanwyNixon]

Would we like to update the banner to link to the updated blog post at https://www.mysociety.org/2020/07/10/foi-and-covid-19-an-update/?

Either way, I've linked to the new post from the top of the prior one.

[garethrees]

Updated the banner with the new URL 👍

[HelenWDTK]

I'm going to close this, as (hopefully) this is something that we will not need to do again.