Freedom of Information Act 2000

Dear Mr Haydock

I am writing in response to your request for information that you sent by e-mail on 23^rd April 2008. You requested the following information:

“In relation to the people afforded early retirement as follows:-

Early retirement scheme for prison service managers 2008

Ages, gender, length of service, regional area of work, operational or non operational.

Details of the criteria and date that it was agreed. Total number allowed it. Number with reserved rights. Numbers whom were allowed it because there were concerns regarding their performance / health / attendance.”

Your request is being handled in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as a request for information.

I can inform you that the scheme was initiated by the Prison Service Management Board in December 2007, inclusion on the scheme was by Director nomination only. The criteria agreed was that staff departures must lead to a net overall headcount reduction to help meet headcount reduction targets and to allow those where there was a management need/and or compassionate reasons to be considered. Cost and affordability was then an overriding factor in the decision whether an offer of early departure could be made.

We are unable to provide specific records of the individuals as it is the general policy of the Ministry of Justice not to disclose, to a third party, personal information about another person. This is because the Ministry of Justice has obligations under the Data Protection Act and in law generally to protect this information. Your request for personal information has been considered in line with the Ministry of Justice's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act. However, it has been concluded that the information you have requested is exempt under Section 40(3) of that Act. Section 40(3) of the Freedom of Information Act states that this disclosure would breach the Data Protection principles and therefore we cannot supply the information you have requested.

We can however provide some details but in summary format only. They are as follows:

The ages of the staff nominated ranged from the age of 31 to 60.

107 staff where nominated. This is broken down as:

Of those staff nominated, an offer of early departure was made to 98 of them, 53 of whom accepted, 45 declined the offer and 9 were not eligible for an early departure package as they were either above the normal retirement age or were nominated too late to process in time for the required 31^st March 2008 departure date.

The length of service that the civil servants completed varied from 2 years to 40 years service. They worked in various departments/areas within the Prison Service.

Please note that records are not held centrally to say whether those nominated were either operational or non-operational, had reserved rights or if the nominated people had any concerns surrounding performance, health or attendance. This cannot be obtained without exceeding the `appropriate limit' set out at s.12 of the FOI Act.

Under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Justice is not obliged to comply with any information request where the prescribed costs of supplying you with the information exceed £600. The £600 limit applies to all central government departments and is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 3½ days work per request. Prescribed costs include those which cover the cost of locating and retrieving information, and preparing our response to you. They do not include considering whether any information is exempt from disclosure, overheads such as heating or lighting, or disbursements such as photocopying or postage.

We hold the information in which you are interested, but have estimated that the cost of answering your request would exceed the £600 limit and we are therefore unable to comply with it. Although your request would at present be too costly to answer, if you refine it so that it falls under the cost limit we will consider it further. It may help if I explain that as the information you have requested is not collated centrally in any format, to accumulate the required information would involve assembling individual files and records before having to look through each one individually.

You should however be aware that if you break your request down into a series of smaller requests, we might, depending on the circumstances of the case, decline to answer if the aggregated cost of complying exceeds £600, as permitted by the Fees Regulations.

I hope the above information is satisfactory. However, if you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request by submitting your complaint to the one of address above and quote reference: 9161. Please get in touch within forty working days if you would like us to review the case, if you are not happy with the decision.

During the independent review the department's handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. Should you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you will have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Yours sincerely

David Keysell

Open Government Unit