RESPONSES ON TOPIC 4 - TIMESCALES (Questions 23-24)
9.1 The majority of public authorities who responded to the consultation commented on this topic. Detail on the specific comments is provided in Annex 8. This was another area of the responses where there was an indication that some public authorities might not be clear about some of the provisions of FOI(S)A.
9.2 A number of the responses from public authorities indicated that they had no significant difficulties and that the response timescale requirements are reasonable. A number, however, indicated that there were resource difficulties arising from the timescale requirement and a few indicate concerns with the timescales required for reviews of request responses.
9.3 Some respondees made specific comments on what aspects of the work required make it difficult to meet the timescales, for example, clarifying requests or complexity of information being considered. Suggestions were also offered on possible options for extending response time requirements.
9.4 There were few responses on this topic from the user community. Some of them commented that authorities should reply more quickly and be more aware of their obligations. There was also, however, some concern from users that handling requests for information might be diverting public authorities from their core service provision.
9.5 In terms of other timescales commented on, there were a few views expressed on the length of time being taken for the Scottish Information Commissioner to deal with some appeal cases.