Quote:In defence of Ofcom, it does accept late submissions and seems to be flexible to some degree in this respect. I actually believe it does want to receive public views about this topic.
idb,
I wouldn't go as far as saying they want responses to the consultations as otherwise they would be sending out press releases to the national newspapers asking them to print articles about the consultation and the main bullet points in it and also the email address to respond to. The indigestible 250 page and 50 page consultations and the failure to list all their currently running consultations on their home page says to me they are not very keen on responses. And that they prefer only to have responses from the regular "stakeholders" that they like to work with, who are mainly in the telecoms industry.
However I do not believe that they will not publish the responses they do get in the end, even though it may take a couple of weeks because their IT section is busy with many other things. Also one can actually send one's email asking for a read receipt and if one doesn't get a read receipt within a day or two of sending it one can can call up Clive Hillier or Geoff Brighton to ask them what has happened.
So they will publish all the responses they get on their web site in the end but to claim they actually welcome or encourage getting responses from the public is I think to go too far! In fact if their Consultation department was a business and paid by the number of responses they received for any of their consultations I think they would long ago have gone bust due to lack of sales of their consultation response services. Unfortunately the Fat Cats like Mr Stephen Carter continue to draw their large salaries no matter how poor a job Ofcom does.
And before i get an email in high dudgeon from the Ofcom Communications Director complaining about calling Mr Carter a Fat Cat and saying that this is not courteous talk I must say I really do think being paid 60% more than the prime minister as a civil servant who is not taking any business risks does make the said postholder very Fat Cat indeed. Whereas I as a local governmental community representative at £3.5k per annum am a very Thin Cat indeed!
Lastly I wondered why none of you had commented on the fact that the shorter of the two Ofcom NTS consultations (only 50 pages instead of 200) does not have a Consultations link. Does this mean no one has bothered to respond to this consultation or is Ofcom only publishing responses to both consultations in one place. See
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/nts_info/ which has no responses section.
Also some of you asked why no body or company other than Norfolk Trading Standards had responded so far? The answer to this is simple in that no company like NTL or BT responds until the last couple of hours on the last day because they do not want their commercial competitors to be able to see what their submission is when they are writing their own submissions to Ofcom. So many such bodies will make submissions but you won't see them till the consultation has closed. Or I think they can ask Ofcom to hold off on publication till the consultation is closed.
Lastly though many of you should be sending emails to the Consumers Association/Which asking them why they did not respond to the last consultation on such an important matter for consumers and demanding that they do respond to the consultation this time. Send an email to Which Campaigns Director Nick Stace - nick.stace@which.co.uk and to their Chief Executive - peter.vicarysmith@which.co.uk demanding that they respond to the consultation and highlighting what you believe to be the main issues.