Still waiting to get to the bottom of the Universal Free School Meals dispute

In a much discussed blog post this week, Dominic Cummings, former Special Adviser to Education Secretary Michael Gove, made a number of criticisms of the planning behind the government's universal free school meals (UFSM) policy, announced with fanfare at the Liberal Democrats' conference last year.

After his earlier comments on the topic back in March this year claiming that the policy was under-planned and under-funded were dismissed by ministers, we decided to make a request to the Department for Education under the Freedom of Information Act to get to the bottom of the dispute. But, nearly two months later, we're still waiting for a full response.

In March, the BBC's World at One programme featured Mr Cummings' claims that the Department for Education had opposed the USFM policy and were only told an hour or so beforehand that the policy was going to be announced - before when, he said, no policy work had been undertaken.

He also said that the £150m budget for capital spending on kitchens and dining rooms was "a back of the fag packet number by Clegg's spin doctors". He said it was based on a supposed Department for Education underspend that didn't exist.

Schools Minister David Laws described the claims as "complete and utter balls", referencing pilots undertaken since 2009 and a school food review as the basis on which the policy was planned.

The Department has failed to keep to the 20 day maximum in which FoIs should be responded to, which is particularly unsatisfactory given the nature of the debate and the amount of money at stake. They last told us they'd try to get back to us by today, but we're yet to hear from them. We'll raise this with the Information Commissioner next week.