Dear Mrs Taylor

Information Request FR1528

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request dated 15 October 2009. Your request has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Your request is detailed below in italics:

I would be grateful if under the FOIA you could advise how many

times your Local Authority has applied for care orders via the

Family Courts WITHOUT the Welfare checklist set out in section 1 of

the Children Act 1989 being completed. The completion of the

Welfare Checklist would confirm that extended family members had in

fact been contacted prior to any application for a care order.

Whoever signs the application for a care order is responsible for

ensuring that the Welfare checklist has been fully completed,

please state who within your authority holds this position.

Our Response

Unfortunately, it has been estimated that the time it will take to undertake the necessary search, retrieval and preparation work that will enable us to respond to the request you have made will exceed the fee limit as set out in the Appropriate Limit and Fees Regulations. Therefore, the Council is not obliged to provide a response and I will not be processing your request further. For information purposes, the fee limit set down by the Regulations is £450.00 and in our case this equates to a maximum of 18 hours' of search and retrieval time.

You have not identified the period for which you would like this information, however we understand that in 2008 there were in total 48 interim care orders and emergency protection orders made in favour of Northamptonshire County Council. There may have been many more applications which were not successful. It would be necessary to manually check each of these files in order to determine whether or not the PLO Checklist was completed when the application was made.

It has been estimated that it would take approximately 30 minutes per file and just based on the 48 applications granted this would equate to an estimated minimum of 24 hours to fulfil your request.

We are however able to inform you that it is considered likely that the PLO Checklist was completed at some stage in the proceedings as it is a requirement for the Court to consider the Checklist. We also understand that any statements or other documents containing the Checklist will generally be signed in the name of the Head of Legal Services for Northamptonshire County Council.

Although we were unable to provide you with the information, you should be advised that a modified request will be given due consideration provided the work involved does not, again, exceed the fee limit. Any modification to your request will be treated as a new request for the purposes of the Freedom of Information Act.

Please contact me again if you require any further assistance on this matter and I will do my best to provide relevant help and advice.

If you have any queries or require please do not hesitate to contact me.

The disclosure to you of the enclosed information does not give you a right to reproduce or publish such information without the express permission of the County Council or any other owners of the copyright therein.

If you are unhappy with my response, you can ask the Council to review it. To do this you should write to the address below:

Paul Edwards

Head of Business Intelligence and Performance

Northamptonshire County Council

PO Box 93

County Hall

Northampton NN1 1AN

If our internal review does not resolve the issue to your complete satisfaction, you have the right to apply to the information Commissioner for a decision at the following address:

Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

Or, if you have any complaints in respect of your information request please complete the on-line comments form that can be found at www.northamptonshire.gov.uk, along with a full set of guidance.

Yours sincerely

Maria Damigos

Senior Freedom of Information/Data Protection Officer

Legal & Democratic Services

Northamptonshire County Council

Please ask for: Maria Damigos

Tel: 01604 236707

Our ref: FR1528/MAD

Your ref:

Date: 11 November 2009

Northamptonshire County Council

County Hall

PO Box 136

Northampton, NN1 1AT

w. www.northamptonshire.gov.uk

t. 01604 236707

f. 01604 237004

e. [email address]