Dear Ms Gray,

I have recently received correspondence from the Information Commissioner's Office in relation to a complaint you raised about our handling of your Freedom of Information request. Having reviewed the correspondence on this case I realised that in undertaking the internal review I had not responded to the first 2 parts of your original request. Please accept my apologies for this, which was an oversight on my part. Below I have copied the questions you raised in bold, together with our response to each.

1. “I would like to know how many employees of the council have
been absent from work due to either stress, anxiety, depression or
any combination of those ailments between 1st August 2004 and 31st
October 2008.”

Our records show that between 01/08/04 and 31/10/08 686 individual employees took one or more days sick leave due to what is defined as “Stress/Depression/Mental Health”.

2. “Please also confirm how many complaints of bullying have been made
by employees of the council against managers or colleagues during
the same period.”

For the period in question we did not have a management information system in place that would enable the retrieval of the requested information. To be able to provide you with accurate statistics on the number of complaints of bullying by employees, we would have to manually review all of the files of the individuals who were employed by Lambeth Council in the period in question to establish if they had made a complaint of bullying within that timeframe. Lambeth currently employees c4000 individuals. Therefore, such an exercise would clearly exceed the Freedom of Information Act's Cost Ceiling, which equates to 18 hours work. In refusing this part of your request we are relying on the exemption provided by section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.

I am unable to provide you with further advice on how you can narrow down this element of your request, as, even if you were to reduce the timeframe for which you are seeking information, it would still be extremely difficult to identify and collate the information due to the number of files that would still need to be reviewed, as well as the need to consider other issues such as staff turnover.

However, I can tell you that since 1 December 2008 the Council has had in place a case management system that records this information, and from 1 December 2008 to 1 June 2009 we recorded 11 new cases of grievances relating to bullying and harassment.

You have also requested the following information:

3. “how many employees have claimed constructive dismissal within the same period 1st August 2004 and 31st October 2008 for bullying/harassment, unfair dismissal or one (or more) of
the various discrimination claims and/or under the Protection from
Harassment Act.” and

4. “Please confirm how many claims have been filed against the city
council at the Employment Tribunal within the same period 1st
August 2004 and 31st October 2008 for bullying/harassment or one
(or more) of the various discrimination and/or under the Protection
from Harassment Act.”

As you are aware, statistics on the number of all claims (for the period in question) that have mentioned bullying and harassment or the other areas referred to above have not been provided on the basis that to collate this information would require a manual review of 195 claims for the period in question and would therefore exceed the Freedom of Information cost ceiling. As such we have claimed the section 12 exemption in this regard.

I should further explain that on average we would anticipate that it would take 10 minutes per claim (which are from c750 - 10,000+ pages) to review for relevance to the above questions. For the 195 claims in question such a review would amount to around 32.5 hours work.

In order to bring your request under the Freedom of Information Act's cost ceiling you could request statistics for a shorter period (e.g. 2 years) and we would anticipate that this could be done under the 18 hour limit. Please let me know if you would like to take this option up.

Yours sincerely

Ian Goodwin

Information Governance Manager

Direct Line: 020 79262341

Email: [email address]

CC Nicola Humphries - Information Commissioner's Office

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London Borough of Lambeth

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SW2 1RW www.lambeth.gov.uk