Salford Business School Off-campus Residential Meetings

Dear University of Salford,

I understand that Salford Business School has arranged off-campus
meetings for its staff at a 4-star hotel in Manchester, involving
the option of an overnight stay in the hotel.

I am requesting the following information.

1. How many Salford Business School off-campus residential meetings
took place in 2009?

2. Have any similar events been held or planned in 2010?

3. Where and when were the event(s) held?

4. How many members of staff stayed overnight at the hotel?

5. What was the total cost of the event(s)?

(If possible, please also provide separately the costs of the
following:
a. hire of conference rooms,
b. accommodation,
c. catering (including all lunches, dinners, breakfasts, light
snacks, canapes, beverages, soft drinks, tea, coffee, water, cakes,
biscuits, etc),
d. transportation,
e. IT services, secretarial services and stationery,
f. all other expenses (itemised).
If it is not possible to give details under all of the above
headings, please supply as much information as possible.)

6. Please give details of any leisure (or "corporate
team-building") activities at the event(s), including the cost of
these.

7. Were any alcoholic beverages paid for by the University at the
event(s), or reimbursed to staff as expenses? If so, what was the
total cost involved?

Yours faithfully,

Li Na

Dear University of Salford,

By law, the University of Salford should normally have responded to
this request promptly and by 14 July 2010. Your response is now
overdue.

Yours faithfully,

Li Na

Dear University of Salford,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of
Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of University of
Salford's handling of my FOI requests 'Salford Business School
Off-campus Residential Meetings' and 'Salford Business School Art
Project'.

Obviously we disagree on what constitutes a vexatious request, but
this argument is now with the Information Commissioner.

Instead, the internal review might look at two other complaints
that I have. These are your aggregation of two requests, and how
you calculated the cost of complying with the requests.

First, I do not accept that you should aggregate the two requests.
The Freedom of Information Act places no restrictions on the number
of information requests that an applicant can make at any one time.
The provision you are relying on "is intended primarily to prevent
individuals or organisations circumventing the appropriate limit by
splitting a request into smaller parts. As a matter of good
practice, authorities should exercise caution when considering
whether requests should be aggregated. There should usually be
strong grounds for believing that requests have been framed
precisely in order to circumvent the appropriate limit."

Second, I would particularly request that your internal review
should look at your interpretation of Section 14, and especially
how you calculated that finding the information requested "would
easily exceed the appropriate limit" of £450, or 18 hours of work
at £25/hour.

It could be possible that you have not quite understood what
information I am requesting. I therefore wish to provide some
additional information to make clear exactly what I am asking for.
Since I made my original request, I have managed to find out some
information for myself about Salford Business School's off-campus
residentials:

1. How many Salford Business School off-campus residential meetings
took place in 2009?
Answer: One

2. Have any similar events been held or planned in 2010?
Answer: Yes, there has been one in 2010.

3. Where and when were the event(s) held?
Answer: Both were at the Renaissance Manchester City Centre Hotel,
Blackfriars Street, Manchester, M3 2EQ, in July 2009 and July 2010.

4. How many members of staff stayed overnight at the hotel?
Answer: Approximately 100.

6. Please give details of any leisure (or "corporate
team-building") activities at the event(s), including the cost of
these.
Answer: I am told that there were none.

It took me less than 5 minutes to find that information. I expect
it would not take you more than another 5 minutes to confirm the
exact dates and numbers attending, and that there were no special
leisure activities. Perhaps you could contact the Head of Salford
Business School to find out?

This leaves only questions 5 and 7, relating to the total costs
involved and any expenditure on alcohol for these two events.
Frankly, the university's claim that to provide this information
would "easily" take more than 18 hours is completely unbelievable.
Perhaps you could just find the invoices from the Renaissance
hotel? I'm sure the hotel would even provide a copy of the invoices
if you requested them. You can find their contact details here
http://www.marriott.co.uk/hotels/travel/...

It should also be equally straightforward to find details of
payments to "Arts & Business" for the Art Project.

Given this, could you explain how you calculated that the
appropriate limit of £450 would be "easily" exceeded? It's
inconceivable that the University's financial department and/or its
Business School could possibly be this inefficient.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is
available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/sa...

Yours faithfully,

Li Na