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Protests at Lindsey Oil Refinery
John Simpson made this Freedom of Information request to Department for Communities and Local Government
The request was successful.
From: John Simpson
30 January 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 please release all
documents from this department in relation to the protests held at
the Lindsey Oil Refinery over the employment of 200 foreign workers
which began a few days ago.
What is the department doing to prevent this spreading to other
parts of the United Kingdom and how does it intend to restore
damaged community relations.
Yours faithfully,
John Simpson
From: David Nicholson
Department for Communities and Local Government
5 February 2009
090205 request response Simpson Lindsey Oil Refinery F0002940.doc
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061027 updated DCLG AtoI.pdf
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Dear Mr Simpson,
Thank you for your FOI request of 30 January 2009. I attach the
Department's formal response together with the leaflet that is mentioned
in the letter.
<<090205 - request response - Simpson Lindsey Oil Refinery F0002940.doc>>
<<061027 updated DCLG AtoI.pdf>>
Yours sincerely,
David Nicholson
FITS System Administrator and IT Focal Point
FOI Advice Team
KMD
Communities and Local Government
Zone 4/D10, Ashdown House
123 Victoria Street
London SW1E 6DE
Tel: 020 7944 5841
show quoted sections
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
From: John Simpson
6 February 2009
Dear David Nicholson,
Thank you very much for passing on my request to the other
department and i look forward to hearing their response. However i
am more concerned about this departments involvement in the Oil
refinery dispute.
On the Communities and local government website "about us" page it
says "We have responsibility for all race equality and community
cohesion related issues in England ". In the past few weeks over
1000 people in the United Kingdom have held unofficial wildcat
strikes based on other contractors nationality. This seems like a
Community cohesion problem to me so i would of thought this
department might of had some involvement or taken some action in
response to the dispute.
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 please inform me if the
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government or
Ministers of state / Parliamentary Under Secretary of States from
this department have held any meetings on the oil refinery dispute
since it began. The information i seek is not just about meetings
held "with" those involved in the dispute, its about meetings held
"on or about" the dispute.
As well as information on meetings please provide any official
statements by the Secretary of State on this matter.
Finally is any document available that details this departments
responsibilities, roles and powers on the issue of community
cohesion and how this department interacts with other government
departments in this area of "community cohesion". The best i can
find is on the website at
http://www.communities.gov.uk/communitie... but
that doesn't give much detail.
Thanks again for your original response to my request, i hope you
can help me with the above questions i asked.
Yours sincerely,
John Simpson
From: John Simpson
2 March 2009
Dear Sir or Madam,
On the 30th of January i sent a Freedom of Information Request to
this department about the recent Lindsey Oil Refinery protests. On
the 5th of February i got a response from David Nicholson and the
ref in the document sent was "Infman\026\0022\0001 - F0002940"
The next day i sent a reply seeking further information from this
department, as it has now been over 20 days since i sent that reply
i was wondering if there was a problem and the department did not
get my email or if it is still being looked into?
Just in case there was a problem and my message got lost, the
response i sent was...
"Thank you very much for passing on my request to the other
department and i look forward to hearing their response. However i
am more concerned about this departments involvement in the Oil
refinery dispute.
On the Communities and local government website "about us" page it
says "We have responsibility for all race equality and community
cohesion related issues in England ". In the past few weeks over
1000 people in the United Kingdom have held unofficial wildcat
strikes based on other contractors nationality. This seems like a
Community cohesion problem to me so i would of thought this
department might of had some involvement or taken some action in
response to the dispute.
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 please inform me if the
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government or
Ministers of state / parliamentary Under Secretary of States from
this department have held any meetings on the oil refinery dispute
since it began. The information i seek is not just about meetings
held "with" those involved in the dispute, its about meetings held
"on or about" the dispute.
As well as information on meetings please provide any official
statements by the Secretary of State on this matter.
Finally is any document available that details this departments
responsibilities, roles and powers on the issue of community
cohesion and how this department interacts with other government
departments in this area of "community cohesion". The best i can
find is on the website at
http://www.communities.gov.uk/communitie... .. but
that doesn't give much detail."
--
That was the content of my previous reply, anyway i hope you can
help me with this problem and respond to my Freedom of Information
Request, thanks
Yours sincerely,
John Simpson
From: Ciara Wells
Department for Communities and Local Government
6 March 2009
FAO John Simpson
Please find attached letter responding to your FOI request
<<F0002995.doc>>
<<061027 DCLG IR procedures.pdf>>
show quoted sections
Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
recorded for legal purposes.
From: John Simpson
6 March 2009
Dear Ciara Wells,
Thank you very much for your reply to my Freedom of Information
Request (F0002995), the information and links provided were most
helpful.
Thanks again.
Yours sincerely,
John Simpson
John Simpson left an annotation (18 March 2009)
Thank you very much Francis for posting that response from the other department.
Things to do with this request
- Add an annotation (to help the requester or others)
- Download a zip file of all correspondence
Francis Irving left an annotation (18 March 2009)
Dear Mr Simpson
FOI: 09/0197
Thank you for your request for information dated January 30 2009 which was passed to BERR on 9 February 2009. Please accept my apologies for the delay in my response. Your request was passed to BERR from colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Although I understand you were actually interested in what information DCLG held, you have indicated that you will await BERR's response. Therefore, I have dealt with your request under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act.
You requested the following information:
All documents in relation to the protests held at the Lindsey Oil Refinery over the employment of 200 foreign workers; What is the department (by which you meant DCLG) doing to prevent this spreading to other parts of the UK; How does it (that is, DCLG) intend to restore damaged community relations.
Having considered your request I regret that we cannot provide all documents related to the protests as you requested. The effort to administer your request would exceed the limit prescribed by Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act. This is £600, which represents the estimated cost of spending 24 hours in determining exactly what information the Department holds and locating, retrieving and extracting the information. Above this, we are not obliged to comply with a request. It would take an official who was involved with this dispute to check all their records and those of everyone else who was consulted or involved to establish what they held that might be in scope and then sift through these to see what could properly be released. We stopped counting after a very initial trawl identified over 400 relevant emails and other documents. As a general rule you would need to specify more narrowly where your interests lie. In this respect, though, we were in touch with DCLG to check that they were aware of your specific interests in your request and I'm pleased to see they have replied.
For our part the Department for Business did two significant things to improve the situation and find a way forward: we commissioned Acas to find out the facts of the dispute; and launched a review of productivity of the sector. The Acas report was published on 16th February and can be accessed at: http://www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx... . A statement by Lord Mandelson and John Denham announcing the launch of a review of the engineering construction sector, on the same date can be accessed at: http://nds.coi.gov.uk/environment/mediaD... I hope these two documents will give you a good sense of what we have done.
If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me quoting the reference number above.
Mike Porteous
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