Dear Sir or Madam,

Please could you provide me with copies of any documents you hold
which relate to the impact on the external perception of Rother
District Council arising from the council's engagement with members
of the public submitting requests via the WhatDoTheyKnow website.

This would include minutes of any meetings at which this subject
was discussed, copies of emails or other correspondence (internal
or external), and any other documents which you feel will help give
a full picture of discussions which have taken place within the
authority on this subject.

Yours faithfully,

Susan Davis

Dear Ms Davis

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

Thank you for your request received on 06 April 2009 requesting
information about whatdotheyknow.com website. We are processing your
request in conjunction with the Corporate Resources Division and hope to
be able to respond to you within 4 weeks.

Lynda Crawford
Admin Assistant
01424 787835
[1]www.rother.gov.uk

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1. http://www.rother.gov.uk/

Dear Ms Davis

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

With reference to your request received on 06 April 2009 about
whatdotheyknow.com website, we responded to a query by Ganesh Sittampalan
on 6 August 2008. The response is still available on the whatdotheyknow
website. Since then the volume of requests received via wdtk has declined
somewhat. There has also been an increase in the volume of direct
requests. In the calendar year 2009 from January to the present we have
received 85 FOI requests in total of which 5 (including yours) were via
wdtk.

At this level the feared resourse impacts are manageable and therefore
wdtk has not been discussed recently. In terms of external perception,
the Council runs an "Ask the Leader" facility on its website and this, and
direct requests, seem to be more popular with people who live here.

You may use our internal complaints procedure if you are dissatisfied. If
you are still dissatisfied you may appeal to the Information
Commissioner. Please contact Anne Bruin, Team Leader - Customer Services,
if you wish to complain.

David Edwards
Solicitor to the Council
01424 787840
[1]www.rother.gov.uk

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1. http://www.rother.gov.uk/

Dear Lynda / David,

Thanks for your reply.

I think you may have misunderstood my request. The first part of
your second paragraph deals with the impact on Rother District
Council, and the second part mentions external perception. However,
it wasn't either the impact on, or the external perception of RDC
that I was inquiring about, but the impact ON the external
perception of RDC arising from events surrounding WTDK request(s).

I feel that this is likely to have been a subject which will have
been discussed within your organisation. It may be that none of
these discussions were documented, but if they were, it is those
documents which my request relates to.

I hope that helps clarify things. Could you let me know whether you
have any documents which fall within the scope of my request?

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

Dear Ms Davis

There have been no internal discussions because we are not aware of any
impact on public perception of this Council in relation to whatdotheyknow,
e.g. press coverage locally. I looked at Google and there seem to be a
few Blogs (e.g.
[1]http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2... )
which are available publicly, but there doesn't seem to have been anything
in the local media that would need to be discussed. We simply don't hold
the sort of information requested.

You may use our internal complaints procedure if you are dissatisfied. If
you are still dissatisfied you may appeal to the Information
Commissioner. Please contact Anne Bruin, Team Leader - Customer Services,
if you wish to complain.

David Edwards
Solicitor to the Council
01424 787840
[2]www.rother.gov.uk

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file:///tmp/blocked::http:/www.rother.gov.uk/