Are English Heritage Being Economical with the Truth, Being Unhelpful or Simply Being Ineffectual?

We've just had a response to an FOIA from the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England - otherwise known as English Heritage.  We'd used the What Do They Know Site for simplicity and also to enable others to search both the question and the response.

We had asked a fairly straightforward question and that was, how many vehicles have been using the Stonehenge car parks over the last few years.   Clearly, in planning car-park sizes and access requirements for the new visitor's centre, you would have though English Heritage might have had to come up with a few facts and figures to support their planning application,  facts and figures that would be required by the relevant planning authorities, facts and figures that could be checked and validated.

Well, you might think they would have such facts and figures, but apparently not.  Their answer to the FOIA was:

"Having considered your request I can confirm that English Heritage does not hold the information that you have asked for."

That took us by surprise.   If English Heritage really don't have such information, then the car-park for the new visitor's centre had been built without any evidence to support its size, cost and location - which raises lots of questions about competence, damage to virgin countryside, etc etc.   It raises similar concerns about the relevant planning authorities.

Alternatively, English Heritage may be being deliberately obstructive or economical with the truth.  We had asked for a breakdown of data on the basis of vehicle type, as used by the Department for Transport, on the assumption that English Heritage (an executive Non-Departmental Public Body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport) might be expected to collect data to a common standard with government departments and other public bodies.  Perhaps they don't and collect data in some other form which doesn't directly equate to such common standards - in an ineffectual sort of way.

If they were collecting any sort of traffic data for the Stonhenge site, you might have expected them to volunteer that fact if the question was clearly intended to elicit such information - but they haven't done that.  So if they have any relevant data, they are being unhelpful and disingenuous.  Similarly, if they have used or had access to such data prepared by others, you would expect them to indicate who that might be.

Of course, there may be other explanations and so, before pointing fingers, we have requested an internal review of the answer - as we are prepared to be charitable and accept that English Heritage are merely being ineffectual for the moment.

However, until such clarification is forthcoming, we have to accept English Heritage's own explanation that they "do not hold the information that you have asked for", meaning the new visitor's centre at Stonehenge has been built without any idea of the vehicular traffic likely to use it; suggesting that English Heritage have ridden roughshod through the planning process.  It makes you wonder if a similar lack of stratification of traffic using the A344 was used to defend the decision to close it at the behest of English Heritage?

UPDATE:

A very swift response from Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England

"Having read your most recent email you would appear to asking for different information to that which you did initially: your most recent request focuses on the general use of the car park at Stonehenge while the latter was concerned with the use of the car park by specific types of vehicles.

Given the above I do not think that an internal review is appropriate. Instead your most recent query l will be treated as a new request."

I have to say it smacks of unhelpful games being played...


...I think there was a lack of candour in the original answer.