Please ask for: Ms Kashmero Gosal

Direct Line: 0116 252 7028

E-mail: [email address]

Fax: (0116) 252 7936

Our Ref: FOI 2978

Date: 26^th August 2009

Neil Houston

[email address]

Dear Mr Houston

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 - parking tickets

Your request for information has now been considered and the Council's response to your questions is shown below.

You asked:

1. I would like to request the raw data set of parking tickets issued in the name of the council within the last five year period (22 July 2004 till now) broken down by: date, time, location, narrative of infraction, current status of case, next status of case, transaction details (ie. date, time and method of payments made), officer ID.

Since January 2005 when Leicester City Council took over responsibility for the enforcement of parking, over 200,000 Penalty Charge Notices (PCNs) have been issued. The system that The Council uses does not allow all of the information for each ticket to be easily produced in the way you require. Each individual PCN would need to be accessed on the system manually and the information extracted and collated for you. We estimate that for each record it will take on average 3 minutes to locate, retrieve and extract the data you require.

200,000 PCNs x 3 minutes each = 600,000 minutes or 10,000 hours. Under the Act the Council can charge £25 per hour, and this would mean that the request will cost £250,000. Section 12 of the Act makes provision for public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450. Therefore, your request will not be processed further and this letter acts as a refusal notice under section 17 of the Act.

You may wish to refine your request by narrowing its scope by being more specific about what information you particularly wish to obtain, including any dates or period of time relevant to the information required. As you are aware we do have a duty to advise and assist you in refining your request under s16 of the Act. I have therefore attached the latest release we have made under the Freedom of Information Act showing the top 50 streets ticketed in Leicester. If you want to narrow your request down to specific streets on specific dates we estimate that we could provide the detailed information you require on approximately 360 PCNs.

Some information about streets that are ticketed is also available on our website in some of the recently issued ward newsletters e.g. http://www.leicester.gov.uk/EasySite/lib/serveDocument.asp?doc=137118&pgid=102532 . This information is reasonably accessible by other means and is therefore exempt from release under section 21 of the Act.

If you require any further help to refine your request please do not hesitate to contact me. If you do not refine your request within 40 working days I shall assume you have enough information and close the request.

2. I would also like to request any information regarding reward/bonus schemes/contracts in place for your parking enforcement officers. This is envisaged to cover the details of any systems, including (where bonuses are paid) the amount per officer per year, for the last five years.

No bonus schemes/ contracts are in place for parking enforcement officers.

3. Regarding part 1. ideally I would like the location unit to be 'street' but if this is not practical then under your section 16 duty to advise and assist I would expect you to contact me to discuss how you record this geospatial data so that I may narrow my request in a way that works for both of us.

Please see response to question 1.

4. As a supplementary, under section 16, I would also ask that you provide some detail about the recording processes of this parking information. E.g. What software is used? What data fields are recorded? What other data sets it links to, etc.

The software used is Parking Gateway. The data sets recorded are as follows and does not link to other data sets:

Current address, Issue date, Time, Ticket number, Location, Contravention, Date, Time, Time first Seen, Contravention, Service Trigger, VRM

Make, Colour, Current State of Ticket, Outstanding, Income, Paid, Refunded, Overpaid, Write Off, Cancelled, Progression, Next event, Days remaining, PA Comments, Notes, Payment Number, Payment method, Refunds requested / completed, Correspondence log, History log.

The legislation allows you to use the information supplied for your own personal use. Please be aware that any commercial or other use, for example publication, sale, or redistribution may be a breach of copyright under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 as amended unless you obtain the copyright holder's prior permission.

Not all the information that is supplied which is covered by copyright will be the Council's copyright, for example it may be the copyright of a government department or another Council. You should seek either the Council's consent or their consent as appropriate. The Council is willing to advise you of any such potential issues on request. In order to make a request to re-use the information please contact the Head of Information Governance using the details below.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request please write to:

Head of Information Governance

Information Services

Leicester City Council,

FREEPOST (LE985/33)

New Walk Centre,

LEICESTER LE1 6ZG

e-mail: [email address]

Your request for internal review should be submitted within 40 (forty) working days of receipt by you of this response. Any such request received after this time will only be considered at the Council's absolute discretion.

You can also complain to the Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow SK9 5AF

Telephone: 01625 545 700

www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

Please be aware that the Information Commissioner does not normally consider appeals or complaints until the internal appeals and complaints processes of the public authority which is answering the request have been exhausted. You are therefore advised to complain or appeal to Head of Information Governance before contacting the Commissioner.

Yours sincerely

Kashmero gosal

Information Governance

Information Services