FOI Request handling, Data for Jan 2009 - Jan 2010 inclusive

Dear James,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 - INFORMATION REQUEST - REF NO - 2045
(please quote in correspondence)

I acknowledge your request for information received on Tuesday 16^th
February 2010.

Your request is being considered and you will receive the information
requested within the statutory timescale of 20 working days as defined by
the Freedom of Information Act 2000, subject to the information not being
exempt or containing a reference to a third party.

If appropriate, the information may be provided in paper copy, normal font
size. If you require alternative formats, e.g. language, audio, large
print, etc. then please let me know.

For your information, the Act defines a number of exemptions which may
prevent release of the information you have requested. There will be an
assessment and if any of the exemption categories apply then the
information will not be released. You will be informed if this is the
case, including your rights of appeal.

If the information you request contains reference to a third party then
they may be consulted prior to a decision being taken on whether or not to
release the information to you. You will be informed if this is the case.

A fee may be payable for this information. This will be considered and you
will be informed if a fee is payable. In this event the fee must be paid
before the information is processed and released. The 20 working day time
limit for responses is suspended until receipt of the payment.

Yours sincerely

Natalie

Natalie Morgan

Corporate Customer Care Officer

Policy and Communications Team

Chief Executive's Group

London Borough of Sutton

Civic Offices

St Nicholas Way, Sutton SM1 1EA

 

Tel: 020 8770 6380

FAX: 020 8770 5404

www.sutton.gov.uk

 

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Dear Mr Muldoon

We are sorry that we have missed the deadline. One of my officers has been working on this but she is part time and to produce the information you have requested is a significant amount of work. The deadline was yesterday and we hope to issue the response later today when she is back in the office.

Of course you have the right to refer to the ICO if you wish, but I do not believe he will be unduly concerned about a response one day past the due date.

Yours sincerely
Sarah Milne

Sarah Milne
Corporate Customer Care Manager
London Borough of Sutton
Tel: 0208 770 5251
www.sutton.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Muldoon,

Further to your FoI received 15 February 2010, the deadline for response
for which was 15 March 2009. Please find attached two documents, one our
letter and two, our spreadsheet.

Please accept my apologies that the reply is one day late. I note you
state

Quote "I see no reason why the council could not provider its response
within the statutory limit of 20wd."

I would like to mention that the information contained in this response,
has in fact, exceeded the normal 18 hours to compile, but as the Council
is always keen to improve its reporting and performance, we felt it a good
use of our additional time to compile this information. I mention in my
letter that we are not fortunate to have a good software system that lets
us interrogate our data; all interrogation has to be done manually.

Therefore I apologise once again that there was a one day delay. It is a
matter of personal pride that I comply with deadlines but I was unable to
complete this interrogation until today due to my working part-time.

As stated in my letter, if you are unhappy with the way in which your
request has been handled you may request an internal review. Please notify
us in writing as soon as possible of your request for a review, and the
grounds upon which you feel the appeal is justified. We will acknowledge
your request within 7 working days and aim to reply within 20 working days
of receiving your request. If it will take longer, we will write to let
you know. At the end of the appeal process if you remain unhappy, you may
refer to the Information Commissioner. Further guidance is available from
their [1]website.

Kind regards

Sandria Lewindon

(Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursday mornings)

Corporate Customer Care

Policy & Communications Team

Chief Executive's Group

London Borough of Sutton

Civic Offices

St Nicholas Way, SUTTON SM1 1EA

Tel 020 8770 5433

http://www.sutton.gov.uk

Before you print this, please think about the environment - do you really
need a hard copy?

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Dear Mr Muldoon

For clarity, London Borough of Sutton does log all its FOI request. However the system we use is relatively primitive and therefore the analysis you requested required a great deal of manual intervention. We believe we do operate in line with ICO guidelines. As Mrs Lewindon explained, for closed requests our Tracker only shows the date a request was closed. This would be the case if we printed off the Tracker as a report and sent it to you. To find out the "date received" requires opening each individual request and then totalling each month. If you wish us to perform this additional level of data interrogation which we would be entitled to charge for, please let us know. As a rough guide we log 10-15 requests per week.

We would very much like to improve the quality of data we can readily provide, especially as it would free up officer time, however I am sure you appreciate that in the current economic climate, pressure on council budgets means we cannot prioritise this.

Sarah Milne
Corporate Customer Care Manager
London Borough of Sutton
www.sutton.gov.uk

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