Any attempts at stopping demonstrations?

Confirmation of Freedom Of Information Request

Thank you for your request for information.

Your request details have now been recorded and will be passed on to the
appropriate Divisional Records Officer for action.

This Freedom Of Information Request was based on the following
information:

Name: Mr Thomas
Address: see email address
Email: [FOI #12471 email]
Telephone:
Request Details: Would you please advise the number of legal
demonstrations against council policies or decisions that the council
attempted to stop between 1st January 2003 and 26th May 2009. Please
provide details of each demonstration concerned i.e. what they were about,
the date when they took place or were scheduled to take place and the
method(s) used by the council to try to stop each demonstration.

Of those demonstrations, please indicate which ones, if any, did not take
place as a result of the council's successful attempts to stop them.
Please provide details of those successful attempts, i.e. what was offered
to the protestors and implemented thereafter.

FOI Reference Number: 3855
Target Completion Date: 24/06/2009

Please do not reply to this email.
This is an automatic response to your request, and replies to this message
will not be actioned.

If you need to contact Westminster City Council regarding your request,
please contact:

mailto:[Westminster City Council request email]
Tel:020 7641 3921

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Dear Mr Thomas

Your request for information will not be processed.

This is because the cost of determining whether or not we hold the
information will exceed the "appropriate limit" as stated in the Freedom
of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. It is
estimated that it would cost over £450 to determine whether or not the
information requested is held.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 this letter acts as
a Refusal Notice.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the
cost to within the "appropriate limit". Please contact me if you would
like some advice on refining your request.

You have the right of appeal against the decision. If you wish to appeal
please set out in writing your grounds of appeal and send it to:

Hayley Davies
Litigation
Legal Services
15^th Floor
Westminster City Hall
64 Victoria Street
London
SW1E 6QP

Should you still be dissatisfied with the outcome of any such complaint
you have the right to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner,
pursuant to section 50 of the FOIA. The contact details are:

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

Yours sincerely

Hayley Davies
Litigation

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References

Visible links
1. http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/

Dear Mr Thomas

The information requested is not recorded centrally but if held, would be held by individual departments. However, individuals departments again do not collate this information in a single accessible file. In order to determine whether the information is held, it would be therefore necessary for each Department of the City Council to examine each file it holds which contains information relating to the period between 1st January 2003 and 26th May 2009, to see whether the file contains any information relevant to your request. The calculations have assumed 10 Departments each with 600 files per year each of which takes 10 minutes to check - 10 x 600 x 6 x 10 = 360,000 minutes = 6000 hours.

The Fees regulations set down by the Government set the cost of work per hour at £25. 6000 hours therefore equates to £150,000. This would simply be to determine whether or not the Council holds the information you have requested.

I hope that this explains how the cost you were provided was calculated.

Kind Regards

Hayley Davies
Litigation
Tel: 0207 641 5984

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Dear Mr Thomas

Thank you for your recent email to the Council regarding you Freedom of Information Request (our reference 3855).

You are correct that the Council has a duty to provide advice and assistance to applicants making requests to the Council, under Section 16 of the Act, where this is reasonable in the circumstances to do so. The Information Commissioner has provided guidance on the application of Section 16, with reference to the Code of Practice [available from: http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...)]. Page 2 of the Guidance states:

"Where a public authority conforms with the Section 45 Code, it will have complied with its section 16 obligations. However failure to follow the Code is not an automatic breach of section 16. This is because section 16 refers to "the duty of a public authority to provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so". It is possible that one or more of the steps which the Code outlines may not be reasonable for a particular public authority to undertake in the circumstances. Therefore, non-conformity with the Code in this respect will not mean that there has been a breach of section 16."

I have now reviewed our response to your original request and can advise you of the following:

The cost to comply with your request is that estimated by the Council to determine whether or not we hold the information required. As explained by my colleague, the Council does not hold a central record of protests and/or demonstrations held against council initiatives. Therefore to respond to your query would require a search of every project file held by each individual department to determine if there is any recorded information relating to your request. A conservative estimate of the work involved was provided previously.

In light of how this information is recorded, it is not possible to provide information up to the appropriate limit as to determine it if it is held would itself breach the limit. Nor is it possible for us to provide a list of potential documents as again this would be a list of every document in the Council, and would exceed the appropriate limit to supply.

Should you wish to narrow the scope of your request, it may be that we can confirm whether demonstrations/protests were held in light of specific council initiatives undertaken, for example Motorcycle Parking. Initiatives and activities can be found on our website: www.westminster.gov.uk

Please also be advised that many demonstrations/protests are conducted with the knowledge of the Metropolitan Police and it is possible that they hold some of the information you require.

This completes the Council's review of your request. Should you remain dissatisfied with our response, you are entitled to contact the Information Commissioner, pursuant to Section 50 of the Act. For you convenience, his contact details are:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Catherine Preston
Knowledge and Information Management Team
Information Services
Westminster City Council
101 Orchardson Street
London
NW8 8EA
Tel: 020 7641 3332
Fax: 020 7641 2872
Email: [Westminster City Council request email]

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