Communication with Scientology

Info reads ...

Dear Mr MacDonald

Thank you for your e-mail of 12 October 2009, in which you ask for copies of all memos, documents and communications between the Home Office and the Church of Scientology and related organisations. Your request has been handled in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 as a request for information.

Under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, the Home Office is not obliged to comply with any information request where the prescribed costs of supplying you with the information exceed £600. The £600 limit applies to all central government departments and is based on work being carried out at a rate of £25 per hour, which equates to 3½ days work per request. Prescribed costs include those which cover the cost of locating and retrieving information, and preparing our response to you. They do not include considering whether any information is exempt from disclosure, overheads such as heating or lighting, or disbursements such as photocopying or postage.

We have estimated that the cost of answering your request would exceed the £600 limit and we are therefore unable to comply with it. The Home Office holds a large number of files related to the Church of Scientology. In order to locate information relevant to your request a manual search of each of these files would need to be undertaken. It is this search which would exceed the cost limit. Although your request would at present be too costly to answer, if you refine it so that it falls under the cost limit we wil consider it further. You may wish to consider restricting your request to a single year in which you are particularly interested for example. You should however be aware that if you break your request down into a series of smaller requests, we might, depending on the circumstances of the case, decline to answer if the aggregated cost of complying exceeds £600, as permitted by the Fees Regulations.

You may be interested to know that the Home Office has already released some information relating to the Church of Scientology in the period 1993 - 2008 http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/about-us/fr....

If you wish to request copies of these documents please call the number provided and we will arrange for a set to be sent to you.

Alternatively some information relating to the Church of Scientology may have been released to The National Archives (TNA) as historical records, under the 30 year rule. You can search the TNA’s catalogue at the following link - http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catal....

If you are dissatisfied with this response you may request an independent internal review of our handling of your request by submitting your complaint within two months to the above address quoting reference 13031.

During the independent review the department’s handling of your information request will be reassessed by staff who were not involved in providing you with this response. Should you remain dissatisfied after this internal review, you will have a right of complaint to the Information Commissioner as established by section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act.

I realise that this reply may be a disappointment to you, but I look forward to hearing from you again shortly should you wish to refine your request.

Yours sincerely,

John Bragaglia
Information Access Consultant

This is also covered here

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