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Fee's Estimate & Calculation Form

Where the cost to process a request exceeds £450

In accordance with the Fee Regulations set by Central Government, the Council is not obliged to respond to a written request for information, where it estimates that the cost of complying with the request would be in excess of £450 (which equates to 18 hours of work at £25 per hour).

In all cases the costs must be `reasonable'. In other words it would be unreasonable for the Council to charge an applicant for the operation of a poor records management system.

Estimating the costs of processing requests

When estimating the cost of complying with a written request for Information, the Council will take into account the staff time involved in the following activities:

Determining whether the information is held.
Locating the information or a document that may contain the information.
Retrieving and extracting the information, or a document that may contain the

Information.

The cost of the above activities will be calculated by applying an hourly rate of £25 per person. This hourly rate has been set by Central Government and forms part of the Fees Regulations.

When calculating the costs to process requests, the Council cannot take account of the time taken to consider whether information is exempt under the Act.

Disbursements

Photocopies:

A4 Black & White	10p per sheet
A3 Black & White	20p per sheet
A4 Colour	£1.00 per sheet
A3 Colour	£1.50 per sheet

Fax:

To UK & Ireland	£1.00 per page
To Europe	£1.75 per page
To rest of the World	£2.00 per page

Prints from a PC:

Black & White	10p per page
Colour	50p per page
Photo quality paper prints	£1.00 per page

Electronic Media:

CD Rom	£1.00
Floppy Disc (1.44MB)	£1.00
Scanning of A4 Paper Records	£1.40 per image
Scanning of A3 Paper Records	£2.10 per image
Email attachment	No charge

Postage costs will also apply and will vary per document.

FOI Ref: 1633

Applicant Name: Mr George Cant

Applicant Address:

Officer Job title	Revenues Manager & Debt Manager
Directorate and department	Revenues

Estimate:

Estimated Cost of Research & Retrieval:		Date: 15/03/2010
Estimated Cost of Disbursements:		Date:

Estimated Length of time taken to research/locate/retrieve and reproduce/copy the following:

Hours

Minutes

Total

Document/information type: 52 questions to answer at 1 hour each = 52 hours

Number of pages reproduced:	Cost of reproducing:
Other reproduction methods: i.e. Disc, CD, fax, etc
Other cost of reproduction: £	Cost of Postage:
Notes: (explanation of length of time e.g. number of staff involved) 52 questions to answer at 1 hour each = 52 hours estimated 52 hours x £25 per hour = £1,300.00

Macro FOI.Fee Estimate Form