£32 million investment by LDL

Dear Liverpool City Council,

In Cabinet paper "LDL Contract Refresh Proposal" submitted on 29th
June 2011, the following statement is made :

2.3 In 2006 the Contract was extended to run until 2017. At the
time of the Contract Extension the following benefits were received
by the City Council . . .

. . . Further investment in technology and support to a value of
£41m over the remaining Contract period of ten years. This was
additional to a sum of £18m which was the remaining investment from
the £50m commitment made at the outset of the Contract"

Please answer the following questions in relation to the £32m of
'investment in technology and support' which this report indicates
has already been received by the Council :

Q1 : Please provide a high-level breakdown of the £32m, outlining
what was provided through this investment

Q2 : Who owns the assets which this £32m funded?

Q3 : Who paid the £32m? The implication is that this was funded by
BT, but it is not explicit - it is entirely possible, for example,
that the £32m was recharged to the Council as an expense.
Therefore, it is essential that this money is explicitly accounted
for. Please refer to LDL's published accounts to answer this
question, so that I, and others, can reassure ourselves that this
funding has been adequately accounted for in accordance with
English law.

Yours faithfully,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Ms Glanville,

The report was the Cabinet paper "LDL Contract Refresh Proposal"
submitted on 29th June 2011 - as stated in my FOI request.

The sum of £32 million is obtained by applying the laws of
arithmetic to the following statement, taken from this report :

"This was additional to a sum of £18m which was the remaining
investment from the £50m commitment made at the outset of the
Contract"

I'm sorry if my request wasn't clear enough. I'm a little
disappointed you've requested this clarification now, within 3 days
of the statutory deadline, as this is pretty fundamental to your
ability to answer the question.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Karen Hellon,

Your response says :

"Thank you for your recent correspondence requesting information
from the City Council. Your request was received in our offices 21
November 2011 and, is being processed in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000"

and :

"A response will be sent to you as soon as possible and in any case
within the statutory deadline which is 20 working days from the
working day after your request was received"

Must I remind you that I submitted this request on 22nd October,
which means that your response is already overdue. You acknowledged
receipt on 25th October and waited until 14th November before
asking a question which did not need to be asked - ALL of the
information you requested was contained in the original FOI
request.

I do not accept that my request was received in your offices on
21st November. The request was receipted on 25th October, and has
not been amended. I can not be responsible for any difficulties
which your colleagues might have with reading a request written in
English. Please respond immediately.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Mr Symm,

Thank you for the explanation. I can't see the email addresses you
refer to as the WDTK website conceals email addresses to discourage
spammers. Nevertheless, I am grateful that you have explained.

When do you expect to respond to this request, which is now
overdue?

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Mr Symm,

You are mistaken. The FOI request was receipted by LCC on 25th
Octiber and is already overdue. Whatever glitches you may be
experiencing, you have my sympathy, but the law is the law.

Please respond immediately.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Mr Symm,

Please see the following webpage which creates a chronological, and
date-stamped, record of all such requests :

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/32...

As you can see, this request was sent on 22nd October and receipted
by your department on 25th October.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Mr Symm,

Not to worry, these things happen

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Ms Glanville,

I'm sorry, but your response applies to a different FOI question.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Glanville, Andrea,

Thank you for your response, which I reproduce below :

"I refer to your request of 22 October 2011 under the FOIA. You
requested the following:

Q1 : Please provide a high-level breakdown of the £32m, outlining
what was provided through this investment

Q2 : Who owns the assets which this £32m funded?

Q3 : Who paid the £32m? The implication is that this was funded by
BT, but it is not explicit - it is entirely possible, for example,
that the £32m was recharged to the council as an expense.
Therefore, it is essential that this money is explicitly accounted
for. Please refer to LDL's published accounts to answer this
question, so that I, and others, can reassure ourselves that this
funding has been adequately accounted for in accordance with
English law.

I can confirm the Council holds some but not all of the information
you have requested.
In response to point 1 please see table below.
In response to point 2 the Council owns the assets unless there is
a lease in place.
In response to point 3 this information is not held by the Council.
To clarify this point further this information would be held by LDL
who are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000. I would
advise that under FOIA the Council is obliged to provide
information where it is held in an electronic, digital or hard copy
format by the Council there is no requirement for us to provide
responses to comments, suggestions or opinions as identified in
point 3.

HIGH LEVEL INVESTMENTS £m
ICT
Hardware re System Replacements
PCs, voice and new service requirements 11.2

Contact Centre
Set up of new centre with hardware and 7.2
systems together with upgrades /
replacements

Revenue and Benefit ICT System
Replacement and Further Upgrades 8.2

HR and Payroll System
Replacement and Further Upgrades 3.2

Total 29.8"

I note that the £32 million referred to in the Cabinet paper turns
out to be £29.8 million. Thank you for making this known. It is not
clear from your response whether LCC has had any opportunity to
verify that these items do, indeed, have the values attributed to
them - are they LCC's figures, following some audit process, or are
they figures supplied by LDL without the benefit of being audited
by LCC?

You state that the Council owns the assets unless there is a lease
in place. In a response to a previous FOI question, the council
stated that there are no leases in operation between LCC and either
LDL or BT, so I am perplexed by this statement. Please clarify -
are there leases in place? If so, with which entity? I would be
grateful if you would regard this as part of the original question,
and respond at your earliest opportunity.

I have to say that I find your response to Q3 unacceptable. The
Council is a shareholder in LDL, and therefore must, at the very
least, know where in LDL's accounts this investment appears. You
could, surely, inform me whether the £32 million was recharged to
the Council? The point of this question is to establish the
genuineness of the benefit which accrues to the Council, so that I,
and other taxpayers, can form an informed view of the rationale
behind the contract extension.

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Liverpool City Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

AFter some consideration, I am writing to request an internal
review of Liverpool City Council's handling of my FOI request '£32
million investment by LDL'.

I note that the £32 million referred to in the Cabinet paper turns
out to be £29.8 million. Thank you for making this known. It is not
clear from your response whether LCC has had any opportunity to
verify that these items do, indeed, have the values attributed to
them - are they LCC's figures, following some audit process, or are
they figures supplied by LDL without the benefit of being audited
by LCC? This is a serious question for the internal review to
consider : what form of quality checking was applied to the
information which was provided in the FOI response?

You state that the Council owns the assets unless there is a lease
in place. In a response to a previous FOI question, the council
stated that there are no leases in operation between LCC and either
LDL or BT, so I am perplexed by this statement. Please clarify -
are there leases in place? If so, with which entity? Your original
response did not answer the question posed, because you introduced
the idea of leases without the accompanying information.

Your response to Q3 is unacceptable. The Council is a shareholder
in LDL, and therefore must, at the very least, know where in LDL's
accounts this investment appears. You could, surely, inform me
whether the £32 million was recharged to the Council? The point of
this question is to establish the genuineness of the benefit which
accrues to the Council, so that I, and other taxpayers, can form an
informed view of the rationale behind the contract extension.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/32...

Yours faithfully,

Jenny Griffin

Dear Mr Symm,

Thank you for your response, which I reproduce below :

"I have investigated the Council’s response made to you on 23
November 2011.

The information you requested was as follows:

1. Please provide a high-level breakdown of the £32m, outlining
what was provided through this investment

2. Who owns the assets which this £32m funded?

3. Who paid the £32m? The implication is that this was funded by
BT, but it is not explicit - it is entirely possible, for example,
that the £32m was recharged to the Council as an expense.
Therefore, it is essential that this money is explicitly accounted
for. Please refer to LDL's published accounts to answer this
question, so that I, and others, can reassure ourselves that this
funding has been adequately accounted for in accordance with
English law.

For the purposes of clarity I will be conducting our internal
review based on the following which was emailed to the City Council
on the 27 November 2011 and, whilst the City Council acknowledges
the further information you provided by way of this correspondence,
only the following paragraph can be considered for the purposes of
any internal review.

• Your response to Q3 is unacceptable. The Council is a shareholder
in LDL, and therefore must, at the very least, know where in LDL's
accounts this investment appears. You could, surely, inform me
whether the £32 million was recharged to the Council? The point of
this question is to establish the genuineness of the benefit which
accrues to the Council, so that I, and other taxpayers, can form an
informed view of the rationale behind the contract extension.

Our original response stated that we were unable to provide the
information you requested as the City Council did not hold it.

In order to confirm the validity of the information we originally
provided I have re-contacted and liaised with all of the relevant
members of the City Council who were involved in the drafting of
your response and, accordingly can confirm the following.

The City Council can carry out internal reviews of decisions made
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 where a decision or
exemption has been applied to the non-disclosure or release of
information which it holds.

In this instance the City Council confirmed that it held none of
the information you requested and as a result is unable to carry
out a review of its response.

Accordingly, the City Council upholds its decision to provide the
response it did.

As I have now reviewed your original response, you have exhausted
the Council’s appeals process for the purposes of this request.
Accordingly, should you remain dissatisfied, please contact The
Information Commissioner’s Office"

So your position is that Liverpool City Council has no knowledge of
the origin of the £32 million investment which it accepted as part
of the justification for extending BT's contract. You do not know
whether BT provided this, LDL, or some other entity? In theory,
this investment could have come from organised crime - you are
saying that you have absolutely no knowledge of its source. (I'm
not suggesting that it did come from organised crime, I'm just
making a point).

This is an alarming state of affairs. Does LCC know anything about
the finances of LDL?

Yours sincerely,

Jenny Griffin