Organisations must respond to SARs in a calendar month. Occasionally, for complex Requests, the time may be extended to two or three Calendar Months. In some jurisdictions, the deadline day for response may not land on a weekend or public holiday.
The length of time a request may run for is initially defined for each Request Type. The Super User may define working days or calendar months. Elsewhere, (in Information Request Status Admin) there are definitions of what events pause or restart that countdown timer. The two together ensure that the request days outstanding are accurately presented for any Information Request Type under any circumstances. This includes when a manager changes the Request Type part way through the Response Period (discussed later and also in this FAQ article).
Updates the countdown code to calculate the due date based on the number of months.
- If the request type is a “Month Track” one, then it will calculate the due date from the tracking start date (this is usually the start date, but if you re-start the IR then it would be the restarted date – etc).
- It will add the number of months on to that tracking start date, then step back till the date is valid – i.e., if it was raised on 31-jan and it was a 1 month request type, it would have the due date as 28-feb (or 29-feb if it was a leap year).
- It also enforces our other rules, after calculating the due date, if that due date is a weekend or bank holiday and the request type does not have it ticked to allow ending on them, then it will step forward to the next valid date – i.e., if the calculated due date was 27-apr-2025 and the request type did not have ticked to allow ending on weekends, then it would have the due date as 28-apr-2025.
- Once it knows the month type due date, it will then calculate the count down days based from that due date.
Illustrative Examples
Raised new IR (39370) as the new request type that I’ve made “DPA-Test-1-month”.
Using the Clarification Received (Proof of ID confirmed) date to show the month request type working on different months.
Raised 22nd April 2025, we can see that it has calculated 30 days (as that’s how many are in April) and thus we get the due date of 22nd May 2025.
Changed “Clarification Received date” to 31st Jan 2025 and saved. We can now see that it’s made the new due date 28th February 2025.
For illustration only, let us update the Request Type to allow ending on weekends and change “Clarification Received” date to 04the April 2025. It will make the due date 4th May 2025 (a Sunday).
- Set the Request Type back not to allow ending on weekends (4th May 2025 is a Sunday).
- Re-calculated again and now we see that the due date is Monday 5th May 2025.
- BUT 5th May 2025 is a bank holiday in many jurisdictions and so, if we pick a country with that bank holiday (and if, in addition, that bank holiday is updated in their Bank Holiday Admin correctly), then the end date will fall on the following Tuesday 6th May 2025.
Common questions
Q: What if you change from a one-month DPA Access request to extend it to three months?
A: In this case, the one-month countdown will change to a three month count down taking account of the days that have already run. The exact number of days will be calculated from the actual monthly days total in order to find the new end date.
Q: What if we start with and FOI and decide it should have been logged as a DPA request.
A: the FOI will be 20 working days excluding weekends and bank holidays. So 23rd April 2025 is the start date here.
When saved, the due date for this FOI is now 22nd May 2025 because working days and the bank holiday (5th May) have been skipped over. This result may be seen in the IR Details screen below.
Now let’s change it to be a DPA. Yes, Parks is a terrible example but let’s concentrate on the calendar arithmetic.
It should go to 23rd May 2025 if we choose that one month Request Type.
The countdown also changed to 30 days as there are 30 days in April.
For a 15th January 2025 start date it would change to 15th February and be for 31 days. For 31st January 2025 start it would count to the end of the following month and get to 28th February 2025 giving only 28 days (clearly add one for leap years).
This is shown in the Request Type Admin screenshot below (#82 “DPA – 1Month”) in the highlighted box.
Request Type Admin
This Super User function mentioned earlier allows you to change the way Request Types are processed including privacy settings and the operation of the countdown days.
As you can see, this Request Type
- runs for one Calendar Month (i.e. regardless of weekends and public holidays)
- it may not end on a weekend or bank holiday.
Also note that it is a private DPA type. Thus, it will not show on the Public Disclosure Log or ever be visible to managers without access to “Private” information requests. These access rights are described elsewhere.
Please contact us if you need assistance with different Request Types, Automation or bank holiday calendar entries or any other configuration for FOI and SARs.
