Tomorrow it will have been 20 working days since I filed my Freedom of Information Act request with the Treasury, asking for the justification of the redactions in the earlier FOIA disclosure of documents related to flat taxes.

As the Information Commissioner’s guidance (PDF) explains, the 20-day clock starts ticking the day after the public body receives the request — so I should receive a reply by the close of play on Tuesday.

I’m not holding my breath, though. In the first three months of this year, the only period for which statistics are so far available, the Treasury answered just 114 of the 277 FOIA requests it received within the statutory deadline. Only the Home Office has a worse record of casually breaching section 10 of the FOIA.