Dear Ms MacArthur,

Re: Freedom of Information Request

I write in response to your email dated 3^rd December 2009 requesting a review of the way your Freedom of Information Act request has been dealt with.

I apologise for the fact that a response to your request has not been provided within the 20 working day deadline and that on this occasion the Council has not been able to comply with this.

I also now write in response to your request for the information that was received by this authority on 4^th November 2009. You have specifically requested information in relation to compromise agreements involving teachers and head teachers since September 2004.

We have decided to deal with question 1 in two parts, as follows:

I can confirm that the Council holds the requested information. We are only able to provide some information in relation to compromise agreements entered into by `school staff' from 2008.

Information in relation to compromise agreements regarding `teachers and head teachers' for the period prior to 2008, whilst held, cannot be provided since to extract the information would exceed the 18 hours compliance limit.

Prior to 2008, education services were outsourced by the Council, including the provision of the human resources functions in relation to schools, this included maintaining all relevant records.

When the contract for these services ended in April 2008 those human resources records were returned to the Council. However, the information that you have requested is not held is a readily searchable format. There is no means by which identification of numbers of teachers and headteachers who have signed a compromise period during this period can be obtained without manually trawling through those paper records.

Under the Act, a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if it estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit, section 12(1). The appropriate limit is currently set at £450.00, the estimated equivalent of 18 hours. When determining whether a request is likely to take more than 18 hours, we are required to take into account the time spent locating, retrieving, and extracting the information.

The relevant department has advised us that there are approximately

900 files relating to school staff held. To identify the required information would mean going through each file to establish firstly, whether it was a teacher or head teacher who has left and secondly, whether a compromise agreement was entered into prior to leaving their employment.

With regards to compromise agreement signed by school staff since April 2008 which is when the Council began to record this information in a manner that may be retrieved there have been 12 compromise agreements to date.

Question 2 - How many of these resulted in the termination of their employment?

In response, I can confirm that all of the compromise agreements have resulted in the termination of employment.

Question 3 - How long they had been working for Education service and

Question 4 - How old they were when they left.

In response to questions (3) & (4), I can confirm that the Council holds this information. However, we have decided not to provide the information because it may be considered to be personal data which must be processed in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA).

It is our view that release of the information which you have requested may identify those staff. This would contravene one or more of the principles of the DPA, in particular the first principle which provides that personal data must be processed fairly and in a lawful manner. It requires us, the data controllers in this case to take into account what the reasonable expectation of the person whose information it is.

Given that compromise agreements constitute settlements between staff and their employer, it is our view that disclosing this information would contravene the first data protection principle because those staff would not expect his information to be put in the public domain. It is the Council's view that the disclosure of this information would identify the staff concerned is likely to cause damage and distress. We are therefore withholding this information as exempt under Section 40 of the Act.

In taking this view, the Council has had due regard to whether the public interest in this information (i.e. the length of service and age of the staff concerned) outweighs damage and distress likely to be caused to those individuals. It is our view that the information requested does not add any significant information to justify disclosure likely to lead to identification of the individuals concerned.

I trust that this satisfies your request sufficiently, and the review requested.

If you are dissatisfied with the outcome of that review, you may seek further recourse by lodging an appeal with the Information Commissioner.

Yours Sincerely,

Kim Travis

Principal Lawyer

Public Law Team

for Director of Governance & Law

«CAS_CASE»_«DATE3»

Ms Catherine MacArthur

Email: [email address]

ask for: Kim Travis

direct line: 0208 496 4346

e-mail add: [email address]

direct fax no: 020 8496 4255

our ref: LE/KT/61921

your ref:

date: 8th December 2009