Govt reponse to Select Committee report, independent study into FOI released and change to fees regime expected

Just a quick post for now, more comment to follow. The DCA today have published the following reports:

Report of the Constitutional Affairs Committee: Freedom of Information - one year on
Government Response - [PDF 246kb, 19 pages]

The Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs commissioned an independent review, costing £75,000, to look at the impact of the Freedom of Information Act:

Report of the Independent Review of the impact of the Freedom of Information Act [PDF 525kb, 74 pages]

One of the key headlines is their comment on changes to the fees regime:

Following the conclusions of the review the Government is minded to:
i.
include reading time, consideration time and consultation time in the calculation of the appropriate limit (£600) above which requests could be refused on cost grounds; and
ii.
aggregate requests made by any legal person, (or persons apparently acting in
concert, to each public authority (e.g. Government Department) for the purposes of
calculating the appropriate limit.

The fees EDM I've reported on was obviously put out ahead of this annoucement which certain parties knew was coming.