Categories
Academic Freedom Regulatory Ultimatum Renewable Gas

A Brief Unhelpfulness from My Government

So, in response to my second Freedom of Information Request, I get this reply from my Department of Energy and Climate Change :-


“The Department wishes to be as open as possible in answering requests, and to help people obtain the information they are looking for. Unfortunately, in this case, from our preliminary assessment it is clear that to determine whether the Department holds the information you have requested and to locate, retrieve and extract the information would require a substantial volume of work.”

“After careful examination of your request […] a public authority may refuse to disclose information to the extent that the request for information is manifestly unreasonable.”

“We acknowledge that there may be public interest in the information you have requested. Greater transparency makes the government more accountable to the electorate and increases trust and also enables the public contribution to policy making to become more effective.”

“However, your request is broad and voluminous. Establishing whether we hold the information you request and gathering it would be likely to involve a significant cost and diversion of resources from the teams concerned and the Department’s other work. Therefore, we will not process your request as currently drafted at this stage.”

It is clearly going to be an uphill struggle to investigate the UK Government’s policy, position and research on and into the engineering feasibility of Renewable Gas.

I wonder whether they could have at least answered one of my questions, at the very least, as a kind of token gesture of co-operation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.