Guidance for parking enforcement contractor

Dear Rob Dyke

Please find your Freedom of Information Act Request attached.

(See attached file: 20090115 - Rob Dyke - Enforcement Parking -
Response.doc)

With kind regards

Jenene Young
*********************************
StreetCare Service Unit
eMail: [email address]
WebSite: www.brent.gov.uk/streetcare
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"Thank you for your submission. This is an automated acknowledgement to
confirm that we have received your request and also to confirm that all
eMails received in StreetCare before 4 pm are distributed the same working
day. Mail received after 4 pm is distributed the next working day. You
can contact our HelpDesk on 020 8937 5050 between 8 am & 8 pm Monday to
Friday and between 9 am & 1 pm on Saturdays if you need to speak to someone
about your enquiry."

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Dear Mr Dyke

Freedom of Information request for additional information - Guidance for
parking enforcement contractor

Thank you for your reply for additional information to Jenene Young dated
15th January 2009 (copy below).

Please note that there are no immediate plans to publish these procedures
on the Council's web site, however, a major re-vamp of the Parking
Enforcement pages on the web site will be taking place shortly, and the
publication of these types of procedures will be reviewed at that time.

Thank you for your interest.

Kind Regards /// Jenny Miller
-----------------------------------------------
Systems & Office Manager
London Borough of Brent, StreetCare Service Unit
1st Floor West, Brent House, 349/357 High Road, Wembley, Middlesex, HA9
6BZ
http://www.brent.gov.uk/streetcare.nsf
http://www.brent.gov.uk
Tel: 020 8937 5093 * Direct Line: 020 8937 5080
Fax: 020 8937 5090

========================================================
"Dear Jenene Young,

Many thanks for answering my query.

Will you be publishing all this information on the Brent Council
website? I ask as I was forced into making this FOI request as I
could find no single online resource containing these details, nor
would any of the employees of your parking enforcement contractors
give me this information when I requested it.

Yours sincerely,

Rob Dyke"
==================================================================

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Dear Mr.Dyke,

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000 *** Information Request (Ref:
452488)

I have considered your complaint regarding the handling of your FOI
requests with the Council.

I am requesting a review as I have made two FOI requests to Brent
Council and both have come back late.

In reviewing your complaint I have found that you have made a total of
three requests for information with the council and there has indeed been
a delay in each of the responses provided to you.

The requests I have found with their target dates and the actual date of
the response are given below:

+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Request Number and Unit | Target Date | Actual Response | Days overdue |
| | | Date | |
|-------------------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------|
| Streetcare - 452488 | 30/12/2008 | 14/01/2009 | 9 days |
|-------------------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------|
| Libraries, Arts and | 5/12/2008 | 9/12/2008 | 4 days |
| Heritage - 446072 | | | |
|-------------------------+-------------+-----------------+--------------|
| Libraries, Arts and | 20/2/2009 | 3/3/2009 | 7 days |
| Heritage - 475691 | | | |
+------------------------------------------------------------------------+

The number of days overdue calculated in this table is based on working
days only as per the timescales for the FOI Act itself.

I understand that this is a serious concern and it is very important to
Brent Council that the timescales for the Act are upheld, not only to meet
our legal obligation but also to provide a good service to our customers.
I apologise that the service you should be able to expect from the council
was not delivered here.

I have looked at the situation in both units to establish the root cause
of the delay and have found the following to be the case:

Streetcare *** Administration changes occurred within the Parking team
during the period of your request. I have checked the records and observed
similar delays for other requests of this type. The responsibility for the
responses was passed to a new officer during this period and there appears
to have been a deficit in the training for this handover. This has now
been rectified via communication from the management of the team. In
addition to this, Environment and Culture has now implemented a refresher
training programme for all those acting as designated FOI officers to
ensure that any issues are ironed out before being allowed to progress to
this stage again.

Libraries, Arts and Heritage *** It seems that only a single officer was
designated for this section, leaving no contingency in the event of annual
leave or illness. Although these absences were picked up during routing
monitoring of all open cases for the department, this was only picked up
at a late stage in the request. We are now working to put a contingency in
place where more than one officer is available for each area.

On a more general point, whilst there is never a reason for poor service
to be provided I would like to state that in some circumstances there may
be additional requirements to address the FOI that are hidden to the
applicant and may result in the timescale being extended.

In addition, under the FOI Act the Council retains the right to refuse
requests for information which would take beyond the appropriate limit (18
hours as defined in the Act) to produce the information requested and
provide an answer. In the interest of good customer service, Brent seeks
to avoid such refusals where possible unless it feels that the diversion
of resources would negatively impact its ability to provide other core
services to the public.

However, in such cases, it is the councils policy that the applicant
should be kept fully informed of any delay, the reasons for this and
provided with an expected date of the full response. It appears that this
was not done in the above cases and for this I apologise.

I have spoken with each of the sections of the council who were
responsible for handling these request and have been informed that the
reason for no update having been provided was that the timescale was not
expected to be exceeded. In all cases the information requested required
the collation of information from multiple sources. Whilst anticipating
the return of the information, officers made the decision to send out the
response in full only. This was to avoid a interim response being sent
with an expected date of the following day or a few days later being
provided.

This is not however the councils recommended procedure in such cases and
it is essential that all applicant are kept fully informed of the status
of their requests.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to appeal directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted as follows:
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF; Telephone: 01625 545 700,
www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk
As part of our commitment to improve our service to our customers we would
welcome any feedback on the way that we have dealt with your request.

Yours sincerely

Richard Saunders

Richard Saunders - Director Environment and Culture - Brent Council - Tel:
020 8937 5002

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