Departmental circular

Ah, the Kafka-esque world of the BBC and Freedom of Information legislation.

In summary, bloke writes to ask for all recorded communications between the BBC and GCHQ. BBC writes back, nicely, that it's too big a task for the rules - could he narrow it to a part of the BBC ?

Bloke tries a different tack: can he please have any recorded communications between BBC and GCHQ this calendar year ?

BBC gets a little snotty: ‘as the factor which causes your original request to be over the appropriate limit is the size of the search we would have to carry out on the basis of location within the BBC, and not the timescale of the information, this narrowing does not reduce the handling of your request to below the appropriate limit.’

Fair enough, thinks our bloke, and writes back for the complete list of every BBC department that The Information Policy & Compliance Team deem separate, so I can make an informed request that'll burden your department less and would fall within the FOI budget for single requests.

And the BBC plays what it clearly thinks is checkmate: The BBC does not maintain such a detailed list. You will appreciate that due to the size of the organisation and its nature, it changes regularly and such a list would become outdated quickly. 

Hard to believe that the BBC doesn't pay people via a code for the department they're working in. Maybe salaries don't reach the Information, Policy and Compliance team that way.