§ Mrs. GillanTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what percentage of applications for export licences were processed by her Department within 20 days for the period 1 May 1997 to date. [48227]
§ Mrs. Roche[holding answer 30 June 1998]: 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 applications are compiled on the basis of four-week periods. The accumulated data for the period beginning nearest to 1 May 1997 are for the period 3 May 1997 to 30 May 1997. The latest period for which management data are available is the period 2 May 1998 to 29 May 1998.
To the nearest percentage point, 51 per cent. of circulated cases during the period were finalised within 20 working days.
This information was taken from the Export Control Organisation's management data, which are compiled in order to monitor performance at processing applications 47W for Standard Individual Export Licences. The performance measures do not apply to applications for Open Individual Export Licences (due to the very wide variations between goods and country coverage of such licences), to licences covering Iran or Iraq or to exports which are subject to control solely because of United Nations Sanctions.