30^th November 2009

Dear Mr Moore,

Re: Your request for information

Thank you for your email dated 26^th November 2009. As the information you requested is not personal or environmental it has been processed in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

I have investigated your request and can confirm that the General Social Care Council (GSCC) is a register for those who work in social care, and therefore is not a professional requirement for employment as a teacher. Nottingham City Council do not ask applicants whether they are registered with the GSCC when recruiting teachers, nor is there an obligation for teachers working in schools to let the Council know that they are also qualified social workers.

To provide the answer to your request, we would need to conduct a search through all the employee files of teaching staff to see how many have declared at some point that they are registered with the GSCC. However, I believe that Section 12 and Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act apply in this case, and prohibit the release of the information to you. My reasons for this are as follows;

There are currently 2685 teachers employed through Nottingham City Council, and in order to establish which have declared that they are also registered with the GSCC, we would need to check through all their files. As this is not a professional requirement, we would not be able to limit our search to checking job application forms, and so would have to look through all files in their entirety. An added complication is that any results we were to provide to you as a result of such a search would not necessarily be accurate, as teachers are not obliged to provide us with this information, as previously mentioned. Therefore, it is my belief that the cost of determining if the authority holds the information, and then locating and retrieving it, would be more than the appropriate limit, as specified under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Also, as the GSCC registration is not a professional requirement for teaching, any social work qualification or GCSS registration would constitute personal information about a third party under the Data Protection Act. Providing you with the requested information would breach the Data Protection principles, particularly principles 1, 2 and 6. Therefore, we would maintain Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act in this case.

In addition I would like to confirm that Church schools and private schools are separate data controllers, and so we do not have access to their records on this matter. If you wish to pursue this case, you will need to contact them directly for the information. In accordance with Section 1 of this Act, we cannot provide this information to you as it is not held by this Authority.

Upon consideration of the applicable exemptions mentioned above, I write to advise you that we will not be undertaking the work to provide you with this answer. Owing to the fact that this authority is applying an exemption to all of the information requested, please accept this email as a refusal notice issued in accordance with section 17 of this Act.

However, it may interest you to know that you can view current registration information on registered social workers in Nottingham by searching the register at http://www.gscc.org.uk/The+Social+Care+Register/Check+the+register/. This is a search engine which you can use to see who is registered with the GCSS in a certain area. It will not, however, advise whether those registered in social work are also teachers, but it may go some way to answering your query.

Most of the information that we provide in response to Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests will be subject to copyright protection. In most cases the copyright will be owned by Nottingham City Council. The copyright in other information may be owned by another person or organisation, as indicated in the information itself.

You are free to use any information supplied for your own use, including for non commercial research purposes. The information may also be used for the purposes of news reporting. However, any other type of re-use, for example, by publishing the information or issuing copies to the public will require the permission of the copyright

owner.

For information where the copyright is owned by the Council details of the conditions on re-use can be obtained by contacting the Information Governance Office of Nottingham City Council at The Guildhall, Nottingham, NG1 4BT or by telephoning us on (0115) 9154155. For information where the copyright is owned by another person or organisation, you must apply to the copyright owner to obtain their permission.

If you should have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me on the above number quoting your personal case reference which is IGO/09-6354.

If you are not satisfied with the response provided or any exemptions applied you should write in the first instance to Stephanie Pearson, Information Governance, The Guildhall, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BT stating the reasons for your dissatisfaction. If you remain dissatisfied after receiving a response to your initial complaint you can request an independent review from the Information Commissioner's Office at FOI/EIR Complaints Resolution, Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF. You may also contact the Information Commissioner's Office by telephone on 01625 545745 or by email at [email address].

Yours sincerely

Charlotte Halls

Senior Information Governance Officer

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