Information on protest injunction

Dear Ms Evans,

Thank you for your below email requesting information about the
University's application for a High Court injunction.

Your request is being dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 and will be answered within twenty working days
following the date of receipt, i.e. by 14 September 2010.

Yours sincerely,

James Knapton.

--On 16 August 2010 10:59 +0100 Rebecca Evans
<[FOI #44787 email]> wrote:

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Dear Ms Evans,

I write following your request dated 16 August 2010 (below) under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 for information about the University's
application for a High Court injunction. This in fact took place in March
this year rather than May as stated in your email.

I attach copies of:

(a) The Court Order dated 3 March 2010 that relates to the events of that
day ('Court Order 3 Mar 2010.pdf').
(b) The witness statement of the Registrar and Secretary, Mr John Duffy,
dated 3 March 2010 and submitted to the High Court as the application for
the Order ('Witness Statement 3 Mar 2010.pdf'). You will notice that
reference is made in this statement to a bundle of evidential documents
entitled 'JLD1'. The University does not possess an electronic copy of
this bundle and it is too large to be scanned in and emailed to you or
uploaded to the What Do They Know website. The University is, however,
able to send you a hard copy if required.

All other witness statements and correspondence relating to 'the
demonstration in March where students forced their way into Sussex House',
while held by the University, are refused under section 40(3)(a)(i) of the
Act because these documents contain the personal data of individual members
of staff and students. To provide you with this information would
contravene the first data protection principle in Schedule 1 of the Data
Protection Act 1998. The University asserts that it would be manifestly
unfair to these individuals if witness statements they had given in
confidence for the purpose of internal disciplinary proceedings were
released to the public at large. To disclose these documents would be
likely to cause unwarranted distress to the witnesses themselves and the
individuals named in the statements. It is our contention furthermore that
such disclosure is unnecessary because the statement provided by Mr John
Duffy is sufficient to satisfy the legitimate interests of the public in
this case. As this part of section 40 is an absolute exemption, the
University is not obliged to consider the public interest test in this
case. The University has given due consideration to the redaction of these
statements but it has concluded that, precisely because of the nature of
their contents, this cannot meaningfully be carried out in such a way that
the identities of individual members of staff remain concealed.

Your use of the copyright works that you have been sent must be only as
permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You must not
re-use the disclosed documents and the information therein in a misleading
context.

If you are not satisfied with the University's response to your request,
you may ask the University to review it. If you wish to do this, please
write to me in the first instance. Full details of our FOI complaints
procedure, including details of how to complain to the Information
Commissioner, are at:

<http://www.sussex.ac.uk/records/FOIcompl...>

Yours sincerely,

James Knapton.

--On 16 August 2010 10:59 +0100 Rebecca Evans
<[FOI #44787 email]> wrote:

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