27^th October 2008

Dear Mr Carruthers

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 - INFORMATION REQUEST

Your request for information has now been considered and the information requested is enclosed. I trust that this information meets with your current needs. If you have any further questions or queries do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note, that where a single request, or a number of requests from the same source, cost the Council more than £450 (or 18 hours) to administer we may charge for, refuse, or ask the applicant to resubmit a more manageable request. An estimate would be provided if any charge was to be incurred.

Please be aware that the information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial publication or marketing, would require the permission of the copyright holder.

If you have any queries, concerns or if you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request please contact me as above. Alternatively, if you wish to make an official complaint then please use the Council's complaints procedure, details of which will be provided on request. If you are not content with the outcome of your corporate complaint, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner.

Further information is available from the Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire,
SK9 5AF. Telephone: 01625 545 700. www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

Yours sincerely

Sarah Airey

Policy and Performance Team

RESPONSE:

You asked

I should like to know if the council uses Potential Violent Warning
markers (or similar description) against its citizens in any of its
databases. In particular if these markers are used:

The only service areas within Carlisle City Council using Indicators (more wide ranging than Potential Violent Warning markers) on their databases are Council Tax Service and Benefits Service.

An indicator is used in Council Tax to make staff interviewing customers aware that the person may be argumentative, violent etc, and in Benefits where considered as sensitive cases/ learning difficulties.

All staff in Council Tax can add the marker to a client's records.

In Benefits only the Team Leader is able to do so.

They are required to complete notebook details for the reasons for Indicator.

Potentially argumentative etc indicators are reviewed very irregularly (and not since before the floods in 2005 but are being reviewed in 2008/9). The indicator is merely an indicator for staff to take extra care particularly if visiting residents in their own home. Time isn't an issue in such circumstances ie a resident can be potentially violent if only visited once in several years. Such residents have the same access to services and advice as every other customer so are not inconvenienced in anyway because they have been potentially (or actually) violent etc in the past. Unless the resident is considered to be of too violent a nature to be allowed in Customer Contact Centre (see question 5 and 6).

142 Council Tax Records

101 Benefits Records

Very few. Only those that have been refused access to the building through decision passed by the Senior Management Team within the Council.

All of those listed in no. 5 above - currently only one such case.