Dear Mr. Clarke

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

I refer to your e-mail of 10 August 2009, which has been dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

You asked for the following information:

The information I am after is how many roadside stops are in effect at any one time in the UK, the number of teams performing the roadside stops and the total for the year so far.

For example, if VOSA has one team of officers operating a roadside stop for 10 days in one area and another team of officers operating a roadside stop in another area for the same 10 days then the total would be, 2 teams have performed 20 roadside stops operations over the 10 day period.

Also, please can you provide the number of times a vehicle has been called into a roadside stop operation so far this year?

Whilst I can confirm that VOSA does hold the information you have requested, it has been estimated that the provision of this information would exceed the cost limit as defined by the Freedom of Information Act. Section 12 (1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit. The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 set the appropriate limit at £600 for a central government Department or Agency.

The information you have requested is not held centrally and records relating to roadside stops are held separately by each of the 23 enforcement Areas. The only way to obtain the requested information is to extract it from the roadcheck plans held by each Area, which are produced on a monthly basis.

It is estimated that this would take at least 10 minutes per document for the location and retrieval of the relevant roadcheck plans and the subsequent extraction of the information contained in those documents. There are 161 roadcheck plans for the period January 2009 to July 2009, which would be a total of almost 27 hours. When added to the 2.5 hours taken to determine whether the information is held and the subsequent location of the information this equates to a cost of £725. The cost sheet used to calculate this amount has been attached for your information.

You may wish to consider refining your request so that it does not exceed the appropriate cost limit, should you wish to do so, or if you have any queries about this letter, please contact us, quoting reference F0002062.

If you are unhappy with the response provided, you may ask for an internal review. To request an internal review, please write to:

VOSA Corporate Office,

Berkeley House,

Croydon Street,

Bristol,

BS5 0DA

or email [email address]

giving the reasons for your dissatisfaction. It will help us if you quote the reference number for your case.

If you do not agree with the outcome of the internal review, you may lodge an appeal with the Information Commissioner (www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk). The Information Commissioner is an independent official appointed by the Crown to oversee the Data Protection Act 1998, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

The Information Commissioner can consider complaints about any aspect of the way in which requests for information have been handled. Please note: the Information Commissioner would be unlikely to consider your complaint if you have not first requested an internal review.

You can write to the Information Commissioner at:

The Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House,

Water Lane,

Wilmslow,

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

VOSA Information Access

From: Information Access

[email address]

Information Access Team Berkeley House

Croydon Street

Bristol

BS5 0DA

Tel: 0300 123 9000

Fax: 0117 954 2546

Our Ref: F0002062

7 September 2009

Mr. Phil Clarke

[FOI #16665 email]

BY EMAIL