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Dear Blue

Re: Request for Internal Review - Request 4405, 4480, 4525, 4535, 4537

Thank you for your emails dated 26^th October 2009 regarding the response to your recent requests to the Council (our ref: 4405, 4480, 4525, 4535, 4537).

In your emails you asked for an internal review of the handling of your Request. I have summarised the details of your appeal below:

I am sorry that you are dissatisfied with our handling of your requests and I have investigated your complaints under Stage 1 of the Council's Corporate Complaints Procedure. Further details of our procedure can be found on our website: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/councilgovernmentanddemocracy/councils/contactsconsultationandfeedback/complaints-and-compliments/complaints/

Response

Audit Commission Act 1998

In your emails you state that you are dissatisfied with the application of the fees notice issued to you for the above FOI requests as you believe that some of the requested information should be made available under section 15 of the Audit Commission Act 1998.

Section 15 of the Audit Commission Act entitles any person, at each audit, to inspect and take copies of accounts of public authorities. Your requests were for information which does not fall within the categories of information specified in the Act, and were submitted outside of the 20-day inspection period. As such, the Audit Commission Act does not apply to your requests, and will therefore not be considered as part of this review.

Power to charge for information

As your requests do not fall within the scope of the Audit Commission Act, they were instead considered as requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You state in a number of your emails that you are "unaware of any power to charge" for information. Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 makes the provision that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit. In this case section 12 (4) (a) was applied whereby, where two or more requests for information are made to a public authority by one person, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.

This is expanded in section 5 of the Freedom of Information ((Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 [the Fees Regulations], which states that the above regulation applies in circumstances in which: (a) the two or more requests referred to in paragraph (1) relate, to any extent, to the same or similar information, and (b) those requests are received by the public authority within any period of sixty consecutive working days.

On reviewing your request history it emerged that there were 17 logged requests for you within the 60 working day period of 30/07/09 to 20/10/09. 7 of these requests had already been responded to but 10 were still open.

It was considered that requests referenced 4275, 4288, 4481, 4539 and 4544 were not requests for similar information and therefore these were not included in the estimation of how much it would cost to comply with your requests.

Requests referenced 4405, 4480, 4525, 4535, 4537 were all for information relating to the operation of the Council's Parking Services and that these were similar requests for the purposes of Section 12(4)(a). These requests were therefore aggregated for the purposes of determining whether or not the appropriate limit was exceeded. It was estimated that to comply with these five requests would take 30 hours at a cost of £750, based on the £25 per hour set by the government in the Fees Regulations.

I am therefore satisfied that the Council was correct in applying the Regulations to these requests. Although it did not form part of your request, I have also considered whether or not the calculated time for responding to these requests, and therefore the fee requested, are reasonable. Having reveiwed the information requested, the location of the information and the time taken to retrieve it, I am satisfied that responding to these requests will cost the Council £750 and therefore your complaint is not upheld.

For your reference, I have provided below details of the estimated cost for complying with each of these requests.

Time to comply with requests

Requests 4405, 4480, 4525 = 16 hours

Request 4535 = 9 hours

Request 4537 = 5 hours

This completes the internal review into the handling of your Request under the Council's complaints procedure. Should you be dissatisfied with our response, you are entitled to contact the Information Commissioner under Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. For your reference, I have provided his contact details below:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45
Fax: 01625 524510

Web: www.ico.gov.uk

I hope this fulfils your request. Should you have any queries, please contact me at the address above.

Yours sincerely,

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Under the Data Protection Act 1998, Data Subjects have rights to challenge, alter or erase the inaccurate and unlawful processing of their information. In the first instance please contact The Data Protection Officer, Information Services, 101 Orchardson Street, London NW8 8EA. If you are not satisfied with our response you may contact The Information Commissioner: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF