THE Press certainly deserves to be congratulated on the revelations obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (Letter, January 13). I can’t claim comparable success. I think I must ask the wrong kind of questions.
There was my question about the vanishing reference library, swept away while I was still in mid read. I learned that all negotiations were carried out by telephone, so as not to upset people.
Then there was the case of the visitors’ chits. I was told that they were routinely destroyed. I was astonished, but resigned. Years later, a mole whispered that before being destroyed, the information was transferred to a more permanent record.
On another occasion, my FOI request was simply ignored. Eventually, I was sent a goodly bundle of documents; but not the ones I had asked for. More often a simple reply is considered sufficient answer to my questions.
Recently, I inquired about documentation dating back to 2009; historical times in the council calendar. Not only had it been destroyed but no one could remember why it had been produced in the first place.
As consolation, I was granted an FOI request. Happily, I was able to show conclusively that I had not requested this non-existent information.
William Dixon Smith, Acomb, York.
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