Parking Ticket Data

Dear Mr Houston,

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Reference No: 73536

Thank you for your recent request.

Your request is being considered and you will receive a response within
the statutory timescale of 20 working days, subject to the application of
any exemptions. Where consideration is being given to exemptions the 20
working day timescale may be extended to a period considered reasonable
depending on the nature and circumstances of your request. In such cases
you will be notified and, where possible, a revised time-scale will be
indicated. In all cases we shall attempt to deal with your request at the
earliest opportunity.

There may be a fee payable for the retrieval, collation and provision of
the information requested where the request exceeds the statutory limit or
where disbursements exceed £10. In such cases you will be informed in
writing and your request will be suspended until we receive payment from
you or your request is modified and/or reduced.

Your request may require either full or partial transfer to another public
authority. You will be informed if your request is transferred.

If we are unable to provide you with the information requested we will
notify you of this together with the reason(s) why and details of how you
may appeal (if appropriate).

Please note that the directorate team may contact you for further
information where we believe that the request is not significantly clear
for us to respond fully.

Kind regards

Karina O'Neill
Information Governance Team

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Houston,

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000

Reference No: 73536

Thank you for your recent request. We are pleased to enclose the following
information.

1. I would like to request the raw data set of parking tickets issued in
the name of the Council within the last five year period broken down by:
date, time, location, narrative of infraction, current status of case,
next status of case, transaction details (i.e. date, time and method of
payments made), officer ID.
We apply Section 12(1) of the Act, `Exemption where cost of compliance
exceeds appropriate limit' to this specific request.

Section 12 states:
(1) Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a
request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of
complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
(2) Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its
obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the
estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the
appropriate limit.
(3) In subsections (1) and (2) "the appropriate limit" means such amount
as may be prescribed, and different amounts may be prescribed in relation
to different cases.
(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that, in such
circumstances as may be prescribed, where two or more requests for
information are made to a public authority--
(a) by one person, or
(b) by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting
in concert or in pursuance of a campaign,
the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to
be the estimated total cost of complying with all of them.
(5) The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for
the purposes of this section as to the costs to be estimated and as to
the
manner in which they are to be estimated.

This acts as a refusal notice. We confirm that some of the information is
held. Not all of the requested detailed information is available (this is
explained below). It is estimated that the cost of locating, retrieving
and collating the information would cost in excess of £450 (the set
limit) and therefore exceeds the 'appropriate level' as stated in the
Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004
([1]http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2004/uksi_20...). Costs for
staff time i.e. staff retrieving and collating information are set at
£25 per hour and this task would require us to spend more than 18 hours
of staff time on preparing the relevant information. This request would
also require a significant amount of printing; costs for this are set at
20 pence per page. It is estimated that over 3,000 pages would need to be
printed to make the information available for the necessary manual
redaction of vehicle registration numbers (i.e. as would be required under
Section 40, Personal information, of the FoI Act 2000). You are able to
make a payment so that this task could be undertaken. You may also modify
your request to reduce the cost of this task i.e. requesting less detailed
information relating to a period of one year. Please contact us if you
wish to proceed with one of these options.

Please note that we had a change of IT systems in October 2008. We could
provide the following information relating to PCNs issued before October
2008: the total number of PCNs issued each day; the number of PCNs issued
each day broken down by each contravention; and the number of PCNs issued
each day broken down by each civil enforcement officer. To provide this
information as part of the five year period specified in your request
(prior to October 2008) would exceed 18 hours of staff time and would also
exceed the appropriate limit on printing costs.

We could provide the following information relating to PCNs issued after
October 2008: number of PCNs; date and time issued; contravention code;
issuing civil enforcement officer; and location (i.e. street). This
information would be contained in a single report of approximately 3,000
pages long. The report would contain vehicle registration numbers which
would need to be manually redacted; this would have to be redacted on a
hardcopy of the report. Producing this information for October 2008
through 2009 would exceed the appropriate limit on printing costs alone
(i.e. £600) and would also exceed 18 hours of staff time.

2. I would also like to request any information regarding `reward'/bonus
schemes/contracts in place for your parking enforcement officers. This is
envisaged to cover the details of any systems, including (where bonuses
are paid) the amount per officer per year, for the last five years.
We contract out our Parking Enforcement. Our parking enforcement
contractor does not offer rewards/bonus schemes to civil enforcement
officers for meeting or exceeding individual targets as civil enforcement
officers do not have individual targets. Similarly, our parking
enforcement contractor does not offer rewards/bonus schemes to civil
enforcement officers for meeting or exceeding the overall target number of
Penalty Charge Notices.

3. I would also ask that you provide some detail about the recording
processes of this parking information e.g. What software is used? What
data fields are recorded? What other data sets it links to, etc.
The software we currently use is provided by Mouchel Traffic Support. The
software we previously used was provided by Langdale Systems. Both of
these software systems are complex and record a huge number of data fields
that relate to the different stages in the legislative processes that
Penalty Charge Notices can progress through.

4. If FOI requests of a similar nature have already been asked could you
please include your responses to those requests.
This information is not held. There have been no similar requests.

We hope you will find this information helpful.

You have a right of appeal against this response. If you wish to appeal
you must do so in writing to the Corporate Information Manager at the
following address:
Information Governance Team
Room 203, 2nd Floor
London Borough of Lewisham
Town Hall, Catford Road
London, SE6 4RU
or
[email address]

Yours sincerely

Karina O'Neill
Information Governance Team

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Houston,

It is not possible to provide you with the requested information within the appropriate fees limit. We are not able to access the information as you have suggested in your email below.

Kind regards

Karina O'Neill
Information Governance Team

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Houston,

We acknowledge receipt of your appeal to our response to your information
request (reference number 73536). We will now undertake a review of our
original response to you. We will endeavour to respond to you again within
20 working days.

Kind regards

Karina O'Neill
Information Governance Team

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Houston,
Please find the attached review letter in response to your appeal.

Kind regards

Karina O'Neill
Corporate Information Governance Team
0208 314 9928

show quoted sections