Freedom of Information requests

Dear Sir or Madam

I have received your email of 29 November 2009 indicating that you are
still waiting for an internal review of your FOI request. I have checked
the Council's foi inbox and our paper records and can find no record of
your initial request for information although, oddly enough, we do have a
record of your email of 27 January 2009 asking for a review. This was
forwarded to the senior officer responsible for conducting reviews. That
officer left the Council's employment a little after this and there is no
record of what became of the review. You should have been advised that we
had not received your request for information and I can only apologise to
you for the fact that this matter was not dealt with then.

We have experienced some difficulties with emails from the website you are
using and there are a number of examples of emails either not arriving or
being blocked by the Council's security systems. The operators of the web
site say that people are informed if their emails are not delivered but
from recent experience I believe that that is not always the case.

Rather than ask you to re-send your request for information, I have
accessed it on the website and understand it to be as follows:

Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act to date

1) how many requests for information under the Act has the Council
received?

2) how many times has the Council failed to respond within the statutory
20 day period?

In response: the Council does not hold the information that you are
seeking.

If you are not satisfied with my response to your request for information,
you may ask the Council for an internal review of this decision. You
should write to Timothy Date, Solicitor to the Council and Head of
Corporate Governance, at Warrington Borough Council, Quattro, Buttermarket
Street, Warrington WA1 1BN giving details of your complaint. You should do
this as soon as possible, or, in any case, within two months of your
request being refused.

If, following the outcome of the internal review, you remain dissatisfied
with the Council's response to your information request, you have a right
under section 50 of the Act to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545745
Fax: 01625 545510
Email: [email address]

Yours faithfully

Karin Spiers

Corporate Team Manager
Assistant Chief Executive's Unit
Warrington Borough Council

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Dear Sir or Madam

Your request for a review has been passed to the relevant senior Council
officer and you will be contacted again in due course.

Yours faithfully

Karin Spiers

Karin Spiers
Corporate Team Manager
Assistant Chief Executive's Unit
Warrington Borough Council
Tel: 01925 442152
Fax: 01925 413449

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Dear Mr Thomas,
I am responding to your request for a review of the council's response to
your information request.

You requested:

'Since the inception of the Freedom of Information Act to date
1) how many requests for information under the Act has the Council
received?
2) how many times has the Council failed to respond within the statutory
20 day period?'

The Council responded on 30 November 2009 that the Council does not hold
the information you are seeking.

I have undertaken a review of this response. I have concluded that the
response was substantially correct in that the authority does not
currently and has not in the past monitored the number of foi requests
received. However, the authority does of course hold copies of many, but
not all, of the requests received since the inception of the freedom of
information legislation. To that extent it would be possible to recover
those records held and provide some data to respond to your request.
However, the data would be incomplete and would not answer the questions
you have posed. To obtain that data would require the authority to
search all of its electronic and paper records since the inception of the
act to identify which are foi requests and to assemble some of the data
you request. To do so would cost the authority more than £450 which is
the relevant amount for the purposes of section 12 of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. Because the relevant amount would be exceeded in
order for the authority to answer your request, the authority is exempt
from responding under section 12 of the act.

If, after receiving the outcome of this review, you remain dissatisfied
with the Council's response to your information request, you have a right
under Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to appeal to the
Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner's Officer

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Telephone No. (01625) 545745

Email: [1][email address]

Yours sincerely,
Ian Mason

Head of Legal Services
Assistant Chief Executive's Unit
Warrington Borough Council
5th Floor, Quattro
Buttermarket Street
Warrington WA1 1BN

Tel: 01925 442146
Fax: 01925 413449

Email: [email address]

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References

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1. mailto:[email address]