Dear Sir or Madam,

1) How many times has South norfolk district Council entered
enforcement notices in its local land charge registers that have
not been authorised by the Chair or Deputy Chair of the Planning
Committee. as required by its constitution.

2) How long does it take the Head of Planning Services according to
the SNDC Service standards to respond to a complaint that the
Council has introduced about 24 stop and enforcement notices
related to a single property in its local land charge registers,
and used some of its flawed notices to authorise sale of land.

3) On how many occassions have the Leader of the Council and
Cabinet Member for the Planning Committee (either individually or
collectively) been identified as having authorising enforcement
action by officers contrary to the SNDC constitution.

4) What are the likely costs to the SNDC of these ultra vires acts
by the SNDC staff.

Yours faithfully,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Mr Elliott

Thank you for your request which is being considered. You may be aware that we have 20 working days in which to respond to FOI requests and you will therefore hear from me again by 3 April 2009 or earlier if possible.

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 some or all of the information may not be released. You will be informed if this is the case, including your rights of appeal.

There may be a fee payable for ‘reasonable disbursement’ costs such as postage and photocopying. 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.

If you have any queries or concerns then please let me know. If you do contact us again concerning this request, please quote FOI 09-53.

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Right2Know,

What clarification are you seeking there is none posted.

Yours sincerely,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Mr Elliott

Further to your email below, please can I ask you to use the unique identifiers assigned to each request.

Turning to your request, as I have not as yet replied to this FOI request, I am at a loss to understand you and have no record to having asked for any clarification. If you want me to respond in any way, I shall need more details than,

" What clarification are you seeking there is none posted."

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Elliott

Further to your Freedom of Information request below, in relation to question 1, under section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am advising you that the Council does hold the information, which you have requested.

However such instances are not recorded centrally, and it would be necessary to go through every single record where enforcement action has been authorised. Your request for information will not therefore be processed. This is because the cost of locating and retrieving the information would greatly exceed the “appropriate” limited stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

If it is a particular planning enforcement notice you are interested in, then I should advise you that under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, section 21(1), this is information which is reasonably accessible to you as all such notices are published on our website.

In terms of your further questions 2 to 4, under section 14(1), the Freedom of Information Act 2000 states that "Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the request is vexatious." In my opinion, these three questions are designed to cause disruption or annoyance and they all lack any serious purpose or value and thus they fall under section 14(1) and will not be answered.

You have a right of appeal against our decision. In the first instance this appeal must be internal and we enclose a copy of our complaints procedure. We hope that you will not feel it necessary to invoke an appeal, but if you do we will take every care to re-assess your request and let you have our findings.

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Right2Know,

I received an email identifying that a request for clarification
had been sent from yourselves.

As you identify that you publish all your enforcement and stop
notices on your web site.. could you identify where this
iinformation is published as I can't find it. There was such a
facility a few years ago but it seems to have disappeared.

Yours sincerely,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Mr Elliott

1. Further to your email below, dated 18 March, please send me a copy of the email requesting clarification as I am unable to trace this email.

2. In relation to your second point, all enforcement reports are published within the agenda of the relevant meeting and the minutes of that meeting detail the enforcement action to be taken. Therefore if you are interested in a particular enforcement issue, you need to access the committee papers for that meeting and a link to the committee papers is available from the home page of our website www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Right2Know,

The following notices are sufficient. The reference numbers and
date of issue is identified, with each notice was an associated
stop notice.

>CDE 38/96 - 30 April 1996

>>CDE/99/11 - 18 January 2001

>>CDE 03/265 - 30 October 2003 (Notice 1)

>>CDE 03/265 - 30 October 2003 (Notice 2)

>>CDE 03/0265 - 12 November 2003 (Notice 1)

>>CDE 03/0265 - 12 November 2003 (Notice 2)

>>CDE 2004/0158 - 04 November 2004

>>CDE 2006/0061 - 05 May 2006

>>CDE 2008/8155 - 10 June 2008 (Notice 1)

>>CDE 2008/8155 - 10 June 2008 (Notice 2)

>>CDE 2008/8155 - 10 June 2008 (Notice 3)

>>CDE 2008/8155 - 02 July 2008

I wish to know which notices were authorised by the Council
(Planning Committee), with date of authorisation, and if the
notices issued were in accordance with the officers reports, and if
the stop notices were in accordance with the enforcement notices
(i.e. not with a red line.. or for a different date to the
enforcement notice). I also request clarification as to which
person authorised the issue of the enforcement and/or stop notice
and if they were the Chair or Vice Chair of the SW area Planning
Committee.

The notices are not published on the SNDC web site. It is assumed
that this is because they have not been properly authorised.

Attached is a copy of the request for clarification

--- On Sat, 3/14/09, WhatDoTheyKnow <[email address]> wrote:

> From: WhatDoTheyKnow <[email address]>
> Subject: Clarify your FOI request - Length of Complaint
> To: "C. P. ELLIOTT" <[email address]>
> Received: Saturday, March 14, 2009, 8:00 AM
> South Norfolk District Council has asked you to explain part
> of
> your FOI request. To do this, first click on the link
> below.
>
> http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/c/c2zynj14...
>
> You will only get an answer to your request if you
> follow up with
> the clarification.
>
> -- the WhatDoTheyKnow team

I would only regard the remaining parts of my request as vexatious
if you don't identify that the Council has not issued enforcement
and stop notices that are at variance, and have done so without the
required authority (neither the Leader of the Council or the
Cabinet Member with responsibility for the Planning Department have
the required authority). I unfortunately, don't have copies of the
Council's secret files where they identify who was responsible for
authorising the issue of a notice. I anticipate that you do.

Hopefully, that provides all the clarification that you need. I
have contacted the head of planning as well as the Council's
monitoring officer and Head of Paid Service on the issue.. of the
Council's complaints procedure not being followed. They all appear
to disregard the service standards. Please forward to me a copy of
the Council's complaints procedures.. apparently the Advertising
Standards Authority can't take action against you based on an
assertion on your website.. that you meet service standards. It
will be useful for other people if a pdf copy was placed on the
SNDC website.

Yours sincerely,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Right2Know,

I request internal review.

Yours sincerely,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Mr Elliott

I refer to your request for an internal review of our decision shown below
and I assume you are requesting a review of both the decision not to
supply information due to the cost and also the decision not to supply
information because we deemed part of your request vexatious. If this is
not the case, please let me know.

You have no obligation to do so, but in our appeal leaflet we do ask that
when asking for a review, you also:

"give details of how you think we have mishandled your original request
and making any comments you wish"

The internal review is due to be heard at 10.00 am on Friday 1 May 2009
and so if you do wish to add any comments, or reasons as to why you feel
our decision was incorrect or your request mishandled which you think
might assist the panel, then please email these to me no later than 5.00
pm on Thursday 30 April.

We will let you have the decision notice resulting from the panel as soon
as possible, but no later than Friday 8 May 2009.

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Right2Know,

The request was significantly narrowed on about 24 March 2009. The
costs should be negligible.

You identified that you considered questions 2-4 to be vexatious:

How can this be:

2) How long does it take the Head of Planning Services according to
the SNDC Service standards to respond to a complaint that the
Council has introduced about 24 stop and enforcement notices
related to a single property in its local land charge registers,
and used some of its flawed notices to authorise sale of land.

The officers have identified that there are well established
service standards according to the SNDC Constitution. the Council
has failed to respond.

3) On how many occassions have the Leader of the Council and
Cabinet Member for the Planning Committee (either individually or
collectively) been identified as having authorising enforcement
action by officers contrary to the SNDC constitution.

This is not apparent from the files available on the SNDC Website.
the monitoring officer is aware that I have copies of three emails
supplied by the Council related to eight of the notices (in my
initial request) identifying political intervention (prior to the
Council withdrawing three notices). I am unable to determine if
there was political intervention with respect to the other notices.
It is understood that the Monitoring Officer might be
investigating.. but they have failed to acknowledge correspondence
or take any action.

4) What are the likely costs to the SNDC of these ultra vires acts
by the SNDC staff.

This is an open ended question.. and there is no need for the SNDC
to answer this.. However, it potentially has sigificant
implications for both the Council and their employers (the citizens
of South Norfolk), and I would have thought that the SNDC might
have given it some consideration in their risk analysis

Yours sincerely,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Mr Elliott

I should advise you that I have checked our records and no narrowing of the request, or indeed any other correspondence was received from you after I wrote to you on 20 March - see email attached. Perhaps there has been some confusion because you also referred to clarification I had apparently sought and as I mentioned, I had sought no clarification.

Please let me have the email you sent narrowing the request.

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Mr Elliott

As you know, we had convened an internal review panel to examine my
decision not to release certain information to you relating to your
request received on 9 March 2009. The panel met on 1 May and I am now in
a position to let you know their decision and I attach a copy of their
decision notice.

<<Document.pdf>>

If you are still dissatisfied, you have the right of appeal to the
Information Commissioner and I attach the contact details below for your
information:

Office of the Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
Tel: 01625 545745
Email: [email address]
Website: [1]http://www.ico.gov.uk/

Joanna Kitchener
Executive Assistant
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533601
[2]www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

_____________________________________________
From: Joanna Kitchener On Behalf Of Right2Know
Sent: 27 April 2009 10:51
To: '[FOI #9137 email]'
Subject: FW: Freedom of Information request - Length of Complaint -
FOI 09-53

Dear Mr Elliott

I refer to your request for an internal review of our decision shown below
and I assume you are requesting a review of both the decision not to
supply information due to the cost and also the decision not to supply
information because we deemed part of your request vexatious. If this is
not the case, please let me know.

You have no obligation to do so, but in our appeal leaflet we do ask that
when asking for a review, you also:

"give details of how you think we have mishandled your original request
and making any comments you wish"

The internal review is due to be heard at 10.00 am on Friday 1 May 2009
and so if you do wish to add any comments, or reasons as to why you feel
our decision was incorrect or your request mishandled which you think
might assist the panel, then please email these to me no later than 5.00
pm on Thursday 30 April.

We will let you have the decision notice resulting from the panel as soon
as possible, but no later than Friday 8 May 2009.

Joanna Kitchener
Scrutiny and Information Rights Officer
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533602
[3]www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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Dear Right2Know,

Please forward page 2 of your internal review document

Yours sincerely,

C. P. ELLIOTT

Dear Mr Elliott

Please accept my apologies for inadvertently omitting page 2 of the decision notice - I am now pleased to attach the full decision notice.

Joanna Kitchener
Executive Assistant
South Norfolk Council
Long Stratton, Norwich
NR15 2XE
01508 533601
www.south-norfolk.gov.uk

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