Interviews of Applicants to Oakington and Yarl's Wood IMBs in 2008 and 2009

Richard Taylor made this Freedom of Information request to Independent Monitoring Boards Secretariat

The request was refused by Independent Monitoring Boards Secretariat.

From: Richard Taylor

27 May 2009

With respect to interviews for a positions on Independent
Monitoring Boards at Oakington Immigration Removal Centre and
Yarl's Wood IRC in 2008 and 2009 could you please release:

1. Details of recruitment campaigns; along with any waivers of the
requirement to carry out a recruitment campaign.

2. The declarations of the independent panel members, along with
any "minority reports" written by independent panel members.

3. Statistics on the number of applications, interviews,
appointments and vacancies.

4. The "appointment packs" sent to the IMB Secretariat by the chair
of the interviews

5. Information provided to the minister, on the basis of which
he/she was to make appointments.

--

Richard Taylor

Cambridge

http://www.rtaylor.co.uk

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Richard Taylor left an annotation (27 May 2009)

I have written an article about the background to this request which is available via:

http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/concern-about-t...

I anticipate that some information may not be released due to the section 40, personal information exemption. I am not specifically seeking information about myself, although I was interviewed for an IMB position at Oakington in 2008. If this request is not completely successful a subject access request remains a possibility.

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Richard Taylor left an annotation (25 June 2009)

I received a response by post. The text of the covering letter is below. I intend to follow up with the authority asking for clarifications, and for information not supplied; as well as questioning why they appear to have in part not treated this as a Freedom Of Information request, but a subject access request.

"Dear Mr Taylor,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST

You have made an application under the Freedom of Information Act. I am able to respond as below and am sending the response to your home address as the content contains data which is personal to you.

1. Details of recruitment campaigns; along with any waivers of the requirement to carry out a recruitment campaign.

Oakington Immigration Removal Centre Independent Monitoring Board has placed advertorials in the Cambridge Evening News and Hunts Post in the last six months.

Yarls Wood IRC Independent Monitoring Board in 2008 published their annual report in the local press together with contact details for membership.

There were no waivers to carry out a recruitment campaign in either Centre.

2. The declarations of the independent panel members, along with any "minority reports" written by independent panel members.

A copy of the independent panel member's assessment is enclosed.

3. Statistics on the number of applications, interviews, appointments and vacancies.

Oakington IRC - There were two applications for membership to the IMB in the period 01 April 2008 - 31 March 2009 one of whom subsequently withdrew their application. One interview was held, no appointments were made in the same period. The Board has a complement of 12, there are currently three vacancies.

Yarls Wood IRC - The Board has a complement of 12, there are currently two vacancies. There were three applicants to join the Board of which two were appointed.

4. The "appointment packs" sent to the IMB Secretariat by the chair of the interviews

A copy of the appointment pack relating to your application is enclosed.

5. Information provided to the minister, on the basis of which he/she was to make appointments.

A copy of the submission to the Minister regarding your application is enclosed.

Yours sincerely,

Steve Kilbey,
Deputy Head of the IMB Secretariat"

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From: Richard Taylor

11 July 2009

On the 27th of May 2009 I made a freedom of information request
asking for information relating to interviews of applicants to
Oakington and Yarl's Wood IMBs in 2008 and 2009.

On the 22nd of June I received a reply from Mr Steve Kilbey of the
IMB secretariat. This reply was sent by post to my home address. I
am not happy with the response I have received for the following
reasons:

1. My request was clearly a freedom of information request, yet
apparently was dealt with more like a subject access request.

2. The correspondence address I supplied with my request was
ignored, and a response posted to my home address.

3. The response was incomplete. I had not limited any parts of my
request to my own interview.

I would like you to please reconsider your response to parts 2, 4
and 5 of my request and treat my request as a freedom of
information request.

I would also like to seek clarification of elements of the response
I have already received:

a) Oakington IMB's annual report for December to January 2009
states that by the end of that period the board was down to seven
members, with only six of them working. The response states that no
new members were appointed during 2008 or 2009 yet also says, in a
number of places including in the application pack sent to the
minister : "The Board has a complement of 12, there are currently
three vacancies". How can these statements be reconciled? It
appears from the IMB's report that there were at least five
vacancies. In fact a letter which I received on the 27th of March
2009 from the IMB secretariat stated clearly: "The Board at
Oakington currently has seven members in post and there are five
vacancies."

b) The response stated: "Yarls Wood IRC Independent Monitoring
Board in 2008 published their annual report in the local press
together with contact details for membership." Could you please
explain what you mean by this. Did the local press really publish
the whole report? Perhaps they published an article about it?

c) Could you please let me know which issue of the Cambridge
Evening News and Hunts Post the advertorials mentioned were carried
in, and clarify what you mean by advertorial.

Even as a response to a subject access request your reply to my
request was lacking. As I had not made a subject access request I
won't pursue that too far, but would like to note I was
particularly concerned that it appeared that the email which I sent
to the secretariat drawing attention to inaccuracies in the
information which you hold on me has not been acted on.

The full history of this correspondence can be viewed online at:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

I would like you to respond to the email address this message is
from.

Many thanks,

--

Richard Taylor

Cambridge

http://www.rtaylor.co.uk

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Richard Taylor left an annotation (12 July 2009)

The 2008 IMB report on Oakington (http://www.imb.gov.uk/annual-reports/08-...) states:

" At the time of writing the Board still waits to hear about two further prospective candidates whose names were forwarded in May 2008. "

This strongly suggests that there were in-fact two interviews in May 2008 whereas the response to my FOI request states: "One interview was held".

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From: Kilbey Steve
Independent Monitoring Boards Secretariat

23 July 2009

Dear Mr Taylor

You raised an objection in your e-mail of 11 July to the manner in which
your request was handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA). I would like to take this opportunity to address those points.
I have conducted an internal review of the manner in which your original
request was handled.

1. My request was clearly a Freedom of Information request, yet
apparently was dealt with more like a subject access request.

3. The response was incomplete. I had not limited any parts of my
request to my own interview.

Your request contained a number of FOI elements (Questions 1 to 3), and
these were answered in full. The remaining two questions (Questions 4
and 5) requested information that contained personal data relating to
yourself, and to that of other people.

The response to your request should have specified that these two
questions were refused under FOIA Section 40(1) (personal data), as part
of this information contained personal data relating to yourself.

Section 40(1) of the FOIA exempts from disclosure personal data relating
to the applicant. Where such a situation arises, public authorities are
required to consider the request (or a particular element of a request)
under the subject access provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998
(DPA).

In order to be helpful, I decided to disclose those documents that
contained your personal data outside the scope of the FOIA and DPA, in
order to ensure you received the information without having to have this
element of your request considered under the subject access provisions
of the DPA.

With regard to the documents that contained the personal data of third
parties (i.e. other applicants), the original response should have
specified that this information was exempt from disclosure under Section
40(2) of the FOIA. This is because personal data of third parties is
not disclosable under the FOIA, unless there is a strong public interest
in doing so.

This is because disclosure would breach one or more of the Data
Protection Principles, and data subjects (in this case the other
applicants) have a reasonable expectation that their personal data will
be retained in confidence and not disclosed to third parties without
their consent.

I apologise for not making this clear in my original response.

2. The correspondence address I supplied with my request was ignored,
and a response posted to my home address.

Where a person making a request for information under the FOIA asks for
correspondence by a specific route - in your case by e-mail - the public
authority should try to accommodate this unless it is impracticable.

In this instance, as I made the decision to disclose your personal data
in respect of questions 4 and 5 outside the scope of the FOIA, and this
pro-active disclosure was made alongside the answers to questions 1 to
3, I considered it appropriate to send the response to your home address
rather than to the website through which you submitted your request.

I took this decision in order to ensure secure transmission of your
personal data, and to ensure that your personal data was not published
on a public website. Data controllers have a legal responsibility to
ensure that they take appropriate steps to safeguard the personal data
in their possession, and this includes the transmission of such data.
We would not, as a matter of course, send personal data to a requester
via a public website.

If you remain dissatisfied with the review of the handling of your case,
you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner's Office
under Section 50 of the FOIA. You can contact the Information
Commissioner's Office at the following address:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Internet: www.ico.gov.uk

Yours faithfully

Steve Kilbey
Deputy Head
IMB Secretariat
2nd Floor, Ashley House
2 Monck Street
London SW1P 2BQ
Tel: 020 7035 2271

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Richard Taylor left an annotation (17 June 2010)

I've just spotted I made an error. Clearly when writing in summer 2009 I was could not have been referring to the Jan-Dec 2009 IMB report; I meant the 2008 report.

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