Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the average time taken by his Department to respond to a freedom of information request was in each of the last five years; how many and what proportion of such requests his Department did not answer within the target time in each of those years; and how many such requests to his Department had not been answered within the target time as of 1 May 2024.

The department does not record the time spent in answering individual Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and is therefore unable to calculate an average time for answering such requests in any of the last five years.

Statistical information on the Department’s performance in answering FOI requests over the last five years is published by the Cabinet Office at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/government-foi-statistics.

These statistics, which cover all Government departments, include the number that were not answered within the target time. They are published by calendar year, with the latest year being 2023. The annual statistics for 2024 will be published in April 2025 but quarterly statistics may be available sooner.