EXPENSES CLAIMED BY LGO JERRY WHITE

Dear Sir or Madam,

Would you please be kind enough to supply itemised details of
expenses claimed by LGO Jerry White since his appointment as LGO.

Yours faithfully,

M Price

Dear Foi Officer,

Thank you for your response. It raises a number of questions.

In the nine years up to and including 02/03 Mr White claimed £1293
for hotels and subsistence. This averages at £144 per year. Yet in
just one year (06/07) he claimed £6,508 for hotels and subsistence!
That is forty five years worth in one year! What is the explanation
for that, please?

In the nine years up to 02/03 Mr White claimed £14,578 for "other
travel". Yet, subsequently, in just one year (06/07) he claimed
£16,799. What is the explanation for that, please? What did Mr
White's "other travel" consist of, and what was its purpose?

Assuming that the LGO works 219 days a year, in 06/07 he claimed
expenditure of £1.54 per day on mileage but nearly £77 PER DAY on
"other" travel and nearly £30 PER DAY on hotels/subsistence! Please
explain how he managed to achieve this, having noted that in 95/96
Mr White managed to carry out his duties while spending less than
£1 PER WEEK on hotels/subsistence/other travel combined!

By 06/07 Mr White's claim for other travel was 381 times what it
was in 95/96, and his combined hotels/subsistence/other travel
claim was 529 times more than it was in 95/96. Please explain the
mind-boggling escalation in these figures.

In 06/07 how much was claimed for subsistence?

Did Mr White provide receipts accounting for every penny of the
£23,646 he claimed from the taxpayer in 06/07

Yours sincerely,

mark price

Dear Sir or Madam,

When may I expect a response to my previous e-mail re Expenses
Claimed by LGO Jerry White, please?

Yours faithfully,

mark price

Dear Foi Officer,

These revised figures may well be as unreliable as the first set,
of course.

Has Mr White ever claimed for foreign travel?

Has the Commission ever paid directly for foreign travel for Mr
White?

Please list precisely what types of "travel" have ever been claimed
for by Mr White as "other travel".

Please list precisely what types of "travel" have ever been paid
for directly by the Commission for Mr White and classified as
"other travel", other than train tickets.

Yours sincerely,

mark price

Dear Foi Officer,

Please note that the law requires a prompt response. The twenty
working days that you took to respond last time is a maximum that
is allowed if a prompt response is impossible, which was not the
case.

Yours sincerely,

mark price

Dear Ms Pook,

Thank you.

Regarding your response to my request of 29 October 09.

1. You say that your first answer included expenditure that was not
relevant to an expenses enquiry.

Jerry White's Hotel/Subsistence expenditure 06/07 has gone down by
£4,228 in the revised figures. If the Commission didn't pay this
amount directly, and Mr White didn't claim it as expenses, who paid
this portion of his bills and why?

Jerry White's Other Travel expenditure 06/07 has gone down by
£9,751 in the revised figures. If the Commission didn't pay this
amount directly, and Mr White didn't claim it as expenses, who paid
this portion of his bills and why?

2. The following question was not addressed in your response to my
request of 29 October 09. I have amended it slightly because of the
revised figures that you supplied.

Assuming that the LGO works 219 days a year, in 08/09 he claimed
nearly £40 PER DAY on "other" travel. In 95/96 Mr White managed to
carry out his duties while spending less than £1 PER WEEK on
hotels/subsistence/other travel combined! Why does Mr White now
claim more than two hundred times as much from the public purse for
travel as he did in 95/96 to carry out the same duties?

Yours sincerely,

mark price

Dear FOI Officer,

Would you please be kind enough to acknowledge receipt of my last
e-mail (10 Dec). Please note that this is a follow on e-mail that
is seeking answers that were asked originally on 29 Oct 09.

Yours faithfully,

mark price

Dear Foi Officer,

Would you please be kind enough to acknowledge receipt of my e-mail
of 10 Dec and indicate when I may expect a response to questions
that I have been asking since 29 October 09 without receiving
answers.

Yours faithfully,

Mark Price

Dear Local Government Ombudsmen,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Local Government
Ombudsmen's handling of my FOI request 'EXPENSES CLAIMED BY LGO
JERRY WHITE'.

I made a request, about expenses claimed by Jerry White, to the LGO
Service under the FOI Act. Ms Pook, Manager Communications and
Records, responded by providing a set of figures for each of the
years 94/95 to 08/09. Subsequently I forwarded some detailed
questions about the figures that I had been given. However, rather
than address these further questions, Ms Pook responded by giving
me a starkly different set of figures. She wrote ""the report was
run for periods that did not coincide with the annual figures
presented" (which is meaningless, of course). She also wrote that
the report included "expenditure" that was "not relevant to an
expenses enquiry" and that the private car mileage was wrong.

The differences in the two sets of figures involved large sums of
Public funds. Noteably, some figures, already publicly documented,
were changed to become well over sixty per cent smaller.

Please note that the first set of figures was not "corrected" by Ms
Pook until after I had queried them in some detail. Also that a
portion of the first set of figures had been given publicly in
response to an earlier FOI request, and was not "corrected".

The position is thus, as I see it. Neither set of figures is
believable.

The first set, allegedly, were produced incompetently. There is no
logical reason to assume that the second set weren't also produced
incompetently. But the first set of figures have been issued on at
least one previous occasion as correct. They thus may quite
reasonably be presumed to be correct, and the assertion that they
are not, incorrect. Furthermore, the second set of figures have
self-admittedly been produced with some deliberate manipulation of
the paramaters that were input to produce the second report, after
the content of my further questions was evident.

But, above and beyond that, neither set of figures complied with
the terms of the request. Ms Pook said herself that the first set
of figures was wrong because it included "expenditure" that was
"not relevant to an expenses enquiry". Nevertheless, having changed
these figures, Ms Pook wrote, re "other travel" in the second set
of figures, "I should also point out that these figures include all
costs in relation to this type of expenditure – both expenses
claimed by Mr White and costs paid direct by the Commission (for
example, train tickets are usually bought direct by the Commission
in advance)". In other words, the second set was wrong for exactly
the same reason that she herself had given as a reason for the
first set being wrong!

Although titled "expenses - corrected data" the figures given are
not amounts of expenses claimed, as per the request, and it is the
case that after two attempts Ms Pook has failed to give, or has
avoided giving, one correct response.

The Act has not been complied with. There has been a failure of due
diligence, care and attention.

Please note also that Ms Pook failed, self-admittedly, to give a
correct answer to the earlier requester.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ex...

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

mark price