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FOI REVIEW PANEL

Held on 2 October 2008 10.30 am

Panel: Andy Radford (Acting Chief Executive)

Tony Cooke (Acting Head of Strategic Housing)

Legal Adviser: David Ward (Principal Solicitor)

Minute Taker: Emma Nangle (Committee Services Officer)

Also present: Martin Burrows (Planning Enforcement Officer)

Review of request from Mr Stuart Carruthers for information regarding subsequently altered enforcement notices, High Hedges orders and Tree Preservation orders, which South Norfolk Council refused to disclose on the grounds of excess cost.

Background

  1. On 4 September 2008 an emailed Freedom of Information request was received by South Norfolk Council from Mr Stuart Hardwicke Carruthers in the following terms:

  2. On how many occasions has the South Norfolk District Council staff over the last six years changed plans related to its planning enforcement functions and/or high hedges function. Please supply:

      1. copies of all the plans as authorised by members and/or professional staff

      2. copies of all plans modified by Council staff that changed the extent of the land effected by the enforcement notice

3 On 8 September the Information Rights Manager replied by email to Mr Carruthers requesting further clarification. Upon receipt of this clarification, the Information Rights Manager informed Mr Carruthers that it in her view the cost of locating and retrieving the information requested would greatly exceed the `appropriate' time limit stated in the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Mr Carruthers replied to this and requested an internal review, which has led to this appeal.

Findings

  1. The Panel accepted evidence from the Planning Enforcement Officer that the time it would take to locate and retrieve the requested information would greatly exceed the maximum of 2.5 working days. It is anticipated that it would take at least an hour to identify each enforcement case, locate the file, consider its contents copy the relevant plans, locate and consider the corresponding committee report and collate all of the information. There are 229 enforcement files and therefore the panel concluded that it would take around 300 hours to respond to Mr Carruthers' Freedom of Information request, which greatly exceeds the `appropriate' time stated in the said Act.

Conclusions

1. We uphold the Information Rights Manager's decision that to locate and retrieve the information requested would greatly exceed the maximum of working days and cost quoted in the Act. At the prescribed rate of £25 per hour it would cost £7,500 at a minimum and take around 300 hours. If the Appellant is prepared to pay the sum of £7,500 the work will be carried out.

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Dated 2 October 2008

Signed on behalf of the Panel by:

Andy Radford, Acting Chief Executive