North Staffordshire Regeneration Business Plan Projects

trevor jones made this Freedom of Information request to Stoke on Trent City Council

The request was refused by Stoke on Trent City Council.

From: trevor jones

2 December 2009

Dear Sir or Madam,

Could you please provide me with the following information in
relation to the projects included in the NSRP business plan 2009-12
Year 2;

a) Total cost to date
b) Total cost spent on consultants - broken down by company
c) Anticipated final cost & end date

Projects;
1) Central Business District
2) East West Precinct
3) City Centre Masterplan and Public Realm Strategy & Palette
4) City Centre Approaches
5) Newcastle Town Centre
6) Stoke Links
7) Street Car
8) University Boulevard
9) City Waterside
10) Hope Village

Yours faithfully,

trevor jones

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From: Hannah Quinn
Stoke on Trent City Council

3 December 2009

Dear Mr Jones

Your request for information

Thank you for your request for information about costs. Your request was received on 2nd December 2009 and I am dealing with it under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In some circumstances we may charge for information. If there is a charge I will let you know as you will have to pay it before we deal with your request.

Some information does not have to be released under the Freedom of Information Act. We will check the information you have asked for and send you as much as possible. If another person or organisation is named in the information we may have to ask their opinion before we decide what we can give you.

Please note that we are currently experiencing a high volume of requests and therefore we would ask politely that you do not contact us regarding your request unless the statutory deadline has been exceeded or you wish to modify or withdraw your request. This will enable us to process and respond to your request as quickly as possible.

If you have any queries about this email please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours sincerely,
Hannah Quinn

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From: Louise Kelly
Stoke on Trent City Council

11 December 2009

Dear Mr Jones,

Thank you for your emailed dated the 9th December to Hannah Quinn
regarding aggregated requests. I am dealing with this as an appeal and
you will hear from me shortly.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any queries about this
email.

Regards
Louise

Louise Kelly | Information Manager
Information Governance | Chief Executives
City of Stoke-on-Trent
Civic Centre Glebe Street Stoke-on-Trent ST4 1HH
t 01782 235965
e [1][email address]

stoke.gov.uk

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From: trevor jones

15 December 2009

Dear Louise Kelly,

Further to emails sent by Hannah Quinn stating that the responses
to the requests made are linked and total over the statutory limit
can you confirm the timescales in which you will be dealing with
these requests.

As my email of 11th December;

"I fail to see how the expenses claims and hospitality received by
the current acting chief executive and how much NSRP spends on
consultants are linked.

This appears to be a delaying tactic on your part which I am not
happy with and is not in the spirit and intention of the Act. What
is the point in this when I can just resubmit later?

My requests I want answers to first are;

1) Provide a list of expenses claimed by Tom Macartney, NSRP
Managing Director for the current financial year 2009/10 and
2008/9.

2) Provide a list of gifts/benefits received by Tom Macartney NSRP
Managing Director for the current financial year 2009/10 and
2008/9.

Secondly;

Please provide a list of the consultants, interim managers and/or
agency staff currently engaged by NSRP with the following
information;

a) Name
b) Company
c) Role being undertaken for NSRP
d) Start date
e) Hourly or Daily rate and whether this is inclusive or exclusive
of expenses

For the avoidance of doubt these two requests are separate
unrelated requests for which I expect a response, as required by
the Act, within 20 working days of the original request."

The 20 day limit has now been reached and I have failed to receive
a response as I am legally entitled to. If I receive no response in
the next 7 calendar days then I will be referring a formal
complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Yours sincerely,

trevor jones

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From: Louise Kelly
Stoke on Trent City Council

17 December 2009

Attachment usingthefeesregulations 1.pdf
78K Download View as HTML

Dear Mr Jones,

Thank you for your email dated 9th December 2009 in response to your
letter from Hannah Quinn regarding the aggregation of your requests about
North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership (NSRP).

I have listed below the requests that we have received from you between
November 11th 2009 and December 2nd 2009 about the North Staffordshire
Regeneration Partnership.

1541- Tom Macartney NSRP expenses
1545- NSRP Agency staff
1546- NSRP Managers & consultants daily rates
1554- NSRP Audits
1585- NSRP use of Recruitment agencies
1603- NSRP use of Consultants & spend

Your requests for information are all focused on the same subject area ie,
North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership and all (apart from request
1554) request financial information.

The Freedom of Information Act contains provisions in section 12 to
protect public services by preventing public authorities from having to
respond to requests that are highly time consuming. If authorities were
required to spend an unlimited time on these requests then the provision
of their day to day services would obviously suffer and an unfair
imbalance of time spent dealing with requests from different requestors
could result.

In effect this means that there is a finite amount of time that an
authority is required to spend locating and retrieving information for any
given request. This is set out in regulations and equates to 18 hours in
any 60 day period. The relevant regulations are The Freedom of
Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations
2004

To ensure this provision provides the necessary protection for public
services, authorities are permitted to aggregate requests from a single
requestor. Specifically, section 12(4) of the Act allows authorities to
total the estimated time to comply with a number of requests from the same
person.

In the case of your requests our NSRP and Finance staff would be unable to
carry out their normal duties for an unacceptably long period of time if
we were not able to rely on section 12 of the Act.

I hope the above has helped to explain why the Act contains these
provisions and why they are relevant in the case of your requests. If you
wish to submit your requests individually we will estimate the time to
comply with each one and advise if we are able to provide the information
without exceeding the appropriate limit. You may then submit other
requests but 60 days must elapse before we are required to accept them
once the appropriate limit is reached. Please send any new requests to
[1][Stoke on Trent City Council request email].

If you are still not content with the outcome, you may contact the
Information Commissioner. The Information Commissioner can be contacted
at: The Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you require any assistance with
this email.

Yours sincerely

Louise Kelly

Louise Kelly | Information Manager
Information Governance | Chief Executives
City of Stoke-on-Trent
Civic Centre Glebe Street Stoke-on-Trent ST4 1HH
t 01782 235965
e [2][email address]

stoke.gov.uk

Help save the environment; do not print this message unless you have to.

Our vision is to provide Excellent Services, Valued by Customers, if you
think we have given you a good service, please click here to find out
about our awards: www.stoke.gov.uk/wowawards

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