Template Letter

Date: 26/10/2009

Ms Angela Wileman

Dear Ms Wileman,

Re: Freedom of Information request number 1416

Thank you for your request dated 01/10/2009 for the following information:

Under the freedom of information act I would like to know numerical statistics in order by year during the period of 1998 to 2008 (oras far back as you can go) for the following;

1) how many children were taken into local authority care on interim care orders and emergency protection orders under the catagory of emotional harm during the above period ? i do not wish you to include any children for any other catagories of harm/abuse.

2)Out of these children who were taken into care for emotional harm how many of them were specifically for domestic violence between their parents? again i do not wish you to include children who had violence directed at them as that would fall into a different catagory being physical abuse.

3)Out of these children who were put into care for domestic violence how many were returned to family or extended family ?

4)Out of these how many children were put on full care orders?

5)of the children put on full care orders how many were adopted during these periods.

The information you have requested may be held by this authority and can be supplied to you where it is found to be held.

However in accordance with the Fee Regulations set by Central Government, the Council is not obliged to respond to a written request for information, where it estimates that the cost of complying with the request would be in excess of £450 (which equates to 18 hours of work at £25 per hour).

In the spirit of the Freedom of Information Act, the Council will process requests estimated to be in excess of £450. The councils charging policy (that has been produced in accordance with fee regulations for freedom of information), requires us to make a charge for all requests that cost more than £450 to retrieve and supply.

Therefore in accordance with our charging policy, I am writing to advise you that the information you have requested will be charged for. An explanation as to why charges are necessary is shown below.

We estimate that there will be 1000 files or possibly more to retrieve from storage.

The information held on children/family files that may be in scope is not held electronically and therefore cannot be reported on with ease.

Officer/s would need to go through each file manually to extract the information requested where found.

Not every file may relate to care or supervision order proceedings in respect of domestic violence of the other information that has been requested, but as we have no central record regarding the circumstances in respect of each case and the outcome we would have to go through all the files in respect of care or supervision order proceedings.

We estimate that the above work is likely to take approximately 3 hours per file. There may also be disbursement costs for communicating the information.

Based on the above, to prevent charges being necessary it should be noted that the Council can only assess 6 files within the appropriate fees limit. The three hour timeframe is only an estimate and could change subject to the files reviewed.

Please confirm whether you wish to persue this and if so please advise the time period for files you would like us to check.

Please note that your request for the information mentioned above will be suspended until we receive clarification as to whether you require us review the estimated 6 files. Alternatively if you require the Council to do more than 18 hours work on this request please contact us to disucss the terms and payment.

If you are unhappy with the council's response you can make a complaint via the councils complaints procedures and this will be looked into. If you remain unhappy with the decision you may then appeal to the Information Commissioner.

Yours faithfully,

Lee Henley

Lee Henley

Freedom of Information Co-ordinator

Telephone (01375) 652500

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