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Alex Mafton Date: 12^th May 2009

Dear Alex

Freedom of Information Request

I refer to your recent Freedom of Information Request. Your request asked for the following information: -

Your request

Please supply the number of commercial customers that the council provides a service to, then annual amounts of commercial waste collected and list the amounts produced by the top 5 waste producers and in each case please supply this for the last 5 years.

Council's response

I can confirm the following information with regards to your FOI request above.

South Tyneside Council have 946 customers on trade waste contracts. We are unable to provide the top five waste producers, this information is not recorded, as the vehicles do not have the technology fitted to give this information.

For the last five financial years, the tonnages for commercial waste collections are:

2003/2004 = 5704.85

2004/2005 = 5924.04

2005/2006 = 5512.58

2006/2007 = 5432.42

2007/2008 = 4979.80

N.B. The above trade waste tonnage includes waste from some communal properties, an estimate of which would be 125 per month.

I hope this information is assistance to you.

Copyright procedure

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use this information for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you re doing and news reporting. Any other re-use of this information, for example commercial publication requires the permission of the Council as the Copyright holder. All re-use requests will be treated under the Re-Use of Public Information Regulation 2006.

Appeal procedure

Should you wish to appeal against the decision made about this matter you can write to the Records Management Team Leader to have your case reviewed by our Internal Review Panel. This should be sent to us within four weeks and must clearly state the reasons for your appeal and your FOI reference number. The Records Management Team address is as follows: Records Management Team, Town Hall and Civic Buildings, Westoe Road, South Shields, Tyne and Wear, NE33 2RL.

Information Commissioner's office (ICO)

Should you remain dissatisfied, you can appeal against our final decision by writing to the Information Commissioner to have your case independently reviewed.

The Information Commissioner is the Government's Independent Body responsible for overseeing the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Data Protection Act 1998 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

Please do note that the ICO will only review cases that have exhausted the Council's internal appeal procedures. All correspondence to the ICO must quote the Council's reference number and your reasons for your appeal.

The ICO's contact details are as follows: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF. More information can be found on the ICO's website at www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk.

If you have any further queries about this matter then please do not hesitate to contact me on the number below:

Yours sincerely

Bill Buckley

Head of Streetscape

Tel: 0191 427 2652

Email: [email address]