Reports submitted to the council relating to the performance of Sandwell Leisure Trust

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Please quote your reference number INT1-113355705 on all future correspondence.

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Corporate Contact Centre
Customer Services
Transform Sandwell

www.sandwell.gov.uk

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Thank you for contacting Sandwell Council.

Your request has been passed to the relevant service area, who will contact you shortly.

Please quote your reference number INT1-117544515 on all future correspondence.

Regards

Corporate Contact Centre
Customer Services
Transform Sandwell

www.sandwell.gov.uk

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[THREAD ID:1-1XZDXV]

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for your email it has been forwaded to nigel parr who is dealing with the FOI request, however he is out the office today but will respond on his return.

Thanks
Contact Centre

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Dear Andrew,

I am writing to you to apologise for the length of time it has taken to
respond to your Freedom of Information enquiry. I now have the vast
majority of the information necessary to respond to your request. I am out
of the office this afternoon, but I will ensure that I provide a response
to you by no later than next week.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Parr

Data Protection/Freedom of Information Officer

Democratic Services

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

Sandwell Council House

0121 569 3248

Dear Andrew,

I refer to your request for a review of the Council's handling of your
Freedom of Information enquiry, requesting the following information
concerning Sandwell Leisure Trust:

A breakdown of the performance indicators and the scores attained by the
trust since the trust was formed in 2004.

Copies of the National Benchmarking Service reports, since these have been
commissioned.

If not contained in either of the previous to requests, attendance figures
(separately, wet and dry side) for each of the leisure centres, with
monthly and yearly figures.

Similarly, prior to 2004, I would like to see data collected by the
council monitoring the performance of its leisure department, as far back
as 1998, including:-

The attendance figures for each leisure centre,(both wet and dry side).

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your
request and providing the attached information to you. Section 10 (3) of
the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) stipulates that requests that
should be responded to within twenty working days and the Council has
failed to do so on this occasion. I will remind relevant colleagues within
the Council of these requirements. Although it was necessary to locate and
read a significant amount of information prior to disclosure, which has
been part of the reason for the delay, the Council should still have
provided the information in a more prompt fashion.

I have attached the following information held by the Council:

. Performance Figures

. Attendance Figures

I will provide the Benchmarking Reports to you early next week. I had
hoped to have completed this by today but, unfortunately, there are a
number of benchmarking reports and they are quite long documents. I am
having to check them individually in case they contain any personal data
and edit as appropriate.

Sandwell Council does not hold any information covered by your request
relating to the period prior to 2004 and the creation of Sandwell Leisure
Trust.

If you remain dissatisfied with the Council's handling of your request,
you are welcome to contact me. Alternatively, you may wish to contact the
Information Commissioner, who can be contacted via the following address:

Office of the Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

[1]www.ico.gov.uk

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Parr

Data Protection/Freedom of Information Officer

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

References

Visible links
1. http://www.ico.gov.uk/

Dear Andrew,

Further to my email on Friday, please find the remaining information
attached. I have removed the contact details (such as email addresses) of
the report author.

Once again, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your
enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Parr

From: Nigel Parr
Sent: 29 October 2010 15:04
To: '[FOI #45801 email]'
Subject: Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Sandwell Leisure Trust -
Internal Review

Dear Andrew,

I refer to your request for a review of the Council's handling of your
Freedom of Information enquiry, requesting the following information
concerning Sandwell Leisure Trust:

A breakdown of the performance indicators and the scores attained by the
trust since the trust was formed in 2004.

Copies of the National Benchmarking Service reports, since these have been
commissioned.

If not contained in either of the previous to requests, attendance figures
(separately, wet and dry side) for each of the leisure centres, with
monthly and yearly figures.

Similarly, prior to 2004, I would like to see data collected by the
council monitoring the performance of its leisure department, as far back
as 1998, including:-

The attendance figures for each leisure centre,(both wet and dry side).

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your
request and providing the attached information to you. Section 10 (3) of
the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) stipulates that requests that
should be responded to within twenty working days and the Council has
failed to do so on this occasion. I will remind relevant colleagues within
the Council of these requirements. Although it was necessary to locate and
read a significant amount of information prior to disclosure, which has
been part of the reason for the delay, the Council should still have
provided the information in a more prompt fashion.

I have attached the following information held by the Council:

. Performance Figures

. Attendance Figures

I will provide the Benchmarking Reports to you early next week. I had
hoped to have completed this by today but, unfortunately, there are a
number of benchmarking reports and they are quite long documents. I am
having to check them individually in case they contain any personal data
and edit as appropriate.

Sandwell Council does not hold any information covered by your request
relating to the period prior to 2004 and the creation of Sandwell Leisure
Trust.

If you remain dissatisfied with the Council's handling of your request,
you are welcome to contact me. Alternatively, you may wish to contact the
Information Commissioner, who can be contacted via the following address:

Office of the Information Commissioner

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

[1]www.ico.gov.uk

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Parr

Data Protection/Freedom of Information Officer

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

References

Visible links
1. http://www.ico.gov.uk/

Good Afternoon, Andrew

Further to your email dated 18th November 2010, I am writing to you in
respect of your request for further clarification with regard to the
Council's review of the handling of your Freedom of Information request. I
have also seen comments you have made on your blog ("Sandwell Leisure
Trust: How not to deal with an FOI Request") in which you refer to your
request for information and the problems you had acquiring the information
provided. I therefore thought that it might be useful to provide some
further explanation in relation to the points you have raised.

It is the case that Sandwell Leisure Trust, as a registered charity, is
not subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA). You are correct that the Trust receives public funding and it is
possible that the Government may elect to bring Leisure Trusts within the
scope of the FOIA in the same way that the previous Government did with
Academy Schools. However, it is currently the case that Leisure Trust are
not statutorily obliged to respond to requests for information submitted
under the FOIA.

You have also expressed surprise that the Council does not hold any
information from the period prior to the creation of Sandwell Leisure
Trust. I can confirm that one of the purposes of the creation of the Trust
was to improve the recording of this type of information and can also
confirm that this information is not held prior to 2004 as reliable
information was not recorded at that time. Based on the memory of relevant
colleagues, it is my understanding that data was limited and there was
little resource available to invest in updating to a new system. One of
the key reasons for establishing the Leisure Trust was to enable
re-investment in such tools and implement a whole new performance
management infrastructure. The performance management system now in
operation enables us to measure how effective the Trust is at delivering
the Council's priorities.

With regard to the comment about whether the Council thinks that it is
acceptable for a request to be answered late, I can honestly say that the
Council does make every effort to answer Freedom of Information enquiries
as fully as possible where it can reasonably do so and a scan of the
"whatdotheyknow" website will corroborate this. The Council has never
knowingly failed to respond to any Freedom of Information enquiry that has
been logged on the Council's Customer Relationship Management System. I
cannot say that the Council never misses the twenty working day target but
never knowingly experiences very significant delays of the kind typical of
some other public bodies. I would also add that the Council is currently
taking steps to ensure that requests are answered on time whenever
possible and is in the final stages of producing new procedures to handle
enquiries submitted under the Act.

I did apologise for the delay in this case, although I accept that it is
relatively easy thing to do. However, I should stress that the Council had
not disclosed such information before and where a public authority has to
consider whether information should be disclosed, it can lead to delays
occurring. You will also be aware that there was a very large amount of
information disclosed, particularly in relation to the benchmarking
reports. It was therefore necessary to identify and read a great deal of
information prior to disclosure.

With regard to the review, I did concentrate in ensuring the information
was provided as soon as was possible, rather than considering the reasons
for the delay. However, I hope the above explanation provides some
clarity. Should you have any remaining concerns about the Council's
handling of your request, you can refer the matter to the Information
Commissoner, whose contact details can be found from the following link:

[1]https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us...

Alternatively, you are welcome to contact me in the first instance.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel Parr

Data Protection/Freedom of Information Officer

Democratic Services

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

Sandwell Council House

0121 569 3248

References

Visible links
1. https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us...

Please find attached a letter from Sandwell Council in response to your recent contact.

This letter will advise you of the timescales for response and will provide our contact details should you need to get in touch.

If you cannot open the attachment please download the FREE adobe reader that can be found at www.adobe.com
Please do not reply to this e-mail but instead use the contact details found in the letter.

Dear Andrew,

Thank you for your kind email. Yes, you are welcome to add my email to your blog.

Regards,
Nigel

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Please find attached a letter from Sandwell Council in response to your recent contact.

This letter will advise you of the timescales for response and will provide our contact details should you need to get in touch.

If you cannot open the attachment please download the FREE adobe reader that can be found at www.adobe.com
Please do not reply to this e-mail but instead use the contact details found in the letter.