Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what the reasons were for the change in his Department's performance in meeting deadlines for responding to Freedom of Information requests between 2010 and quarter three of 2014.

The Department for Communities and Local Government, recognise the value of the Freedom of Information Act and as part of our commitment to transparency we aim to respond to these requests as quickly as possible.

Freedom of Information Act requests by their nature can prove complex to answer and, notwithstanding the statutory guidance on the amount of time that must be spent in responding, we sometimes take longer to reply in order to gather the information requested.

The change has been driven at least in part by an increased complexity of requests and we have responded to this in recent months by increasing the resources we devote to this area. Early indications show a significant improvement in performance, which we expect will be reflected when figures for cases received after 1 January 2015 are released.

Ministry of Justice statistics are published on a quarterly basis, approximately three months in arrears, so the next figures to be published will refer to cases received in October to December 2014. The figures showing the improvements we have made will be visible in the following quarter when data for cases received in January to March 2015 are made available.