§ Mr. FaberTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of applications for export licences are currently being processed by her Department's export licensing unit within 20 days; and what was the equivalent percentage on(a) 1 December 1996 and (b) 1 May 1997. [19360]
§ Mrs. Roche[holding answer 5 December 1997]: The Export Control Organisation (ECO) of DTI measures its performance against two aims:
to provide a substantive response to an application within 20 working days of receipt for applications that need to be circulated to other Government Departments according to their policy requirements ("circulated" cases);to provide such a response within 10 working days of receipt for applications that are dealt with by DTI itself ("non circulated" cases).In each case full documentation in support of the application must be provided by the applicant at the outset, for these targets to apply.
ECO management data on the processing of licence application is compiled on the basis of four-week periods. The figures to the nearest percentage point for the periods ending nearest to the dates specified are as follow:
Per cent. Four-weeks periods 13 December 1996 2 May 1997 14 November 1997 Circulated applications completed in 20 days 72 69 47 Non circulated applications completed in 10 days 93 97 66