Kirsty Allen, MA PhD
Senior Assistant Registrary
 
Mr Bruce Beckles 
 
 
 
by email 
 Reference: 
FOI-2009-148-4 
16 March 2010 
 
 
 
 
Dear Mr Beckles, 
 
 
I refer to your email of 16 February 2010. 
 
The assumptions underlying your further enquires are incorrect. Files relating to individuals who have 
been dismissed by the University are not held in a discrete, indexed manner, but as part of a much 
larger set of files of personnel who have left the employment of the University.  
 
Specifically, the files of individuals dismissed since 1 January 2004 and prior to December 2008 are 
held in an unsystematic way amongst the approximately 7,500 files which relate to personnel whose 
employment terminated during that period. To extract the files relating to individuals who have been 
dismissed between the relevant dates and sort them into date order would require a search of each of 
the 7,500 files. 
 
The figure of ten working days file mentioned in the letter to you dated 15 February 2010 is based on 
a conservative estimate of 30 seconds per file and accordingly assumes one person spending 62.5 
hours. Given the manual nature of the work, it is considered that it would not be reasonable for the 
person to spend more than six hours a day performing the task in question. In any event, however 
many days the number of hours in question is apportioned over, the appropriate limit would be 
considerably exceeded. 
 
Yours sincerely, 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Kirsty Allen 
The Old Schools
Trinity Lane
Cambridge, CB2 1TN
 
Tel: +44 (0) 1223 764142
Fax: +44 (0) 1223 332332
Email: [email address]
www.cam.ac.uk
 

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