HEADQUARTERS AIR COMMAND RAF Personnel Secretariat

Lancaster Building (Building 2) Room 15 High Wycombe Buckinghamshire HP14 4UE

Mr A Smith E-mail: request-65049- Reference: FOI 11-04-2011-094609-006 [email protected] Date: 11 May 2011

Dear Mr Smith

I refer to my letter of 15 April regarding the clarification which you are seeking regarding the response, dated 5 April, which was provided to question (4) of FOI 14-03-2011-090906-002. You have now requested, from any of the historical data covering the period in question [1990-2011]: (1) the number of ground trade technicians (whichever classifications are used) placed before the promotion board, both A and B candidates, by rank and the numbers of those promotions granted, and (2) based on the response to question (1), to provide this information for each trade group, which would include Trade Groups 4 and 11. As previously mentioned, your request us being considered as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and I have been asked to reply.

In response to questions (1) and (2), Annexes A – D set out the promotion data available for ground trade technician trade groups 1, 4, 5 and 6. The Ground Electronic Technician trade, Trade Group 3, and the Telecommunications trade, Trade Group 11, were amalgamated to form Trade Group 4. Although incomplete, the data provided is the only information held for the ground trade technician trade groups referred to in the Annexes.

For each Annex, the full and short trade titles for the Trade Group are listed on the first page.

The following rank abbreviations have been used in the Annexes:

Rank SAC Senior Jnr Tech Cpl Sgt Sergeant Flt Sgt Chf Tech Chief Technician WO Warrant Officer

If you are not satisfied with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of the handling of your request, then you should contact me in the first instance. If informal resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an independent internal review by contacting the Head of Corporate Information, 6th Floor, MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail [email protected]). Please note that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt to reach informal resolution has come to an end.

If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not investigate your case until the MOD internal review process has been completed. Further details of the role and powers of the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website, http://www.ico.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely

RAF Personnel Secretariat