Board Expenses

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please provide me with a breakdown of expenses for the members of
the GWAS board as detailed at:

http://www.gwas.nhs.uk/default.asp?do=MBOA

I require description, amount, date and the name of who incurred
it. I can process all electronic attachments and can accept any
size attachment.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Hodder

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please take this email as a gentle reminder that you are outside
the limit laid down in law for replying to my request. I trust you
will reply soon.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Hodder

Dear Ms Knight.

Thanks for the reply. If your mailbox is not monitored during
holidays or sickness, then GWAS should not accept *any* requests
via email - else you could constantly be in breach of the law.

As requested:

"Dear Sir or Madam,

Please provide me with a breakdown of expenses for the members of
the GWAS board as detailed at:

http://www.gwas.nhs.uk/default.asp?do=MBOA

I require description, amount, date and the name of who incurred
it. I can process all electronic attachments and can accept any
size attachment.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Hodder"

I trust since it is GWAS's fault you have exceeded the time limit,
you will not be applying it again and will expedite the request.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Hodder

Dear Bernadatte,

I've taken some advice on this and comment as below:

FOI requests can be directed to any member of staff in an
organisation, though WDTK try to send them to the place where they
are most likely to be dealt with efficiently, as you are the
designated person within GWAS, that is you.

The FOI Act dictates that a request must only be made in writing,
it does not dictate which form of writing this must be. Indeed, in
comparison, an application to protest near Parliament (as required
under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005) was
submitted to the police iced on top of a cake; that application was
approved.

In terms of communicating the information back to the requestor;
Section 11 of the FOI act allows those requesting information to
specify the means by which they would prefer communication to be
made. The act requires authorities to: "so far as reasonably
practicable give effect to that preference", though it also allows
authorities to : "comply with a request by communicating
information by any means which are reasonable in the
circumstances."

Essentially, I do not believe GWAS is able to put limitations on
either how the request gets to them or unreasonable limitations on
how they send the reply.

I trust that in the future, GWAS will strive to respond to emailed
requests within the timescale defined by law.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Hodder

Dear Knight, Bernadette,

Thankyou for your reply.

Can you advise me of your formal complaints procedure so that I can
raise this as a complaint, as you are not acting within the
timescales laid down. GWAS has the responsibility to reply to
requests in a timely manner, it is not the requesters
responsibility to obtain the "GWAS preferred route".

If the GWAS response to my complaint does not rectify the situation
(such as a shared mailbox, easily done in Outlook, which GWAS use),
then I am willing to raise it with the Information Commissioner.
Yours sincerely,

Tom Hodder

Dear Bernadette Knight,

Thankyou for the spreadsheet.

To clarify, none of your board members have claimed for anything
other than travel and subsistence associated with the travel?

I'm thinking of things like subscriptions to magazines/trade
journals, entertaining of 3rd parties, professional registration
fees or anything that is not travel related.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Hodder