Scientology internal comms

The City of London acknowledges receipt of your request.

City of London
[1]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

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Further to your request of 7 April 2009 (one of two of that date), and our
acknowledgement of 8 April, we respond as follows.

This response constitutes a Refusal Notice. The City of London (CoL)
estimates that the work required to locate and extract the information you
have requested would take considerably more than provided for in the
Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004, exceeding the cost ceiling, called (as you will know)
the 'appropriate limit', of £450, representing 18 hours work by one
person equivalent at the statutory chargeable rate of £25 an hour.

To ensure that we fully complied with the considerable scope of your
request would involve thoroughly surveying the filing systems (in every
medium), for each department, employee and elected Member, covering all
document types and checking for every organisation which you list. The
length of time that this would take would be so excessive as to make it
very difficult to estimate. However, assuming an average of 20 minutes per
member of staff of the CoL as a local authority, police authority and port
health authority, and for each elected Member, this would take
approximately 833 hours at a cost of £20,825.

Because of the general nature and scope of your request, (a) we are unable
to confirm or deny to what extent we may hold information you have
requested; and, (b) it is difficult to suggest ways in which you could
reduce your request so that it may fall within the appropriate limit.
There is no focus to your request and therefore no indication of any
particular area of interest. However, assuming concentration on those
main functions (as listed below), most likely to hold information, we
calculate it would take 153 hours, at a cost of £3,825 to locate and
retrieve any information. For resource reasons, it is the practice of the
CoL not to comply with requests which exceed the appropriate limit.

For your assistance the breakdown of the total estimate is as follows:

Economic Development Office - 1 hr,

Public Relations Office - 3 hrs,

Planning & Transportation Department (excluding information already on the
CoL website) - 3 hrs

Community & Children's Services Department - 8 hrs

Comptroller & City Solicitor's Department - 10 hrs

Environmental Services Department (Trading Standards, District Surveyors,
Cleansing & Highways) - 16 hrs

Rates Collection Office - 19 hrs

Police Authority - 28 hrs

Town Clerk's Department (Town Clerk, Deputy Town Clerk, Finance and Policy
& Resources (P&R) committees and their chairmen, Court of Common Council
minutes) - 29 hrs

Elected Members (other than chairmen of P&R and Finance Committees) - 36
hrs

We can confirm that, as far as our Security and Contingency Planning Team
(which embraces also the Drug Action Team), is generally aware (ie without
doing a thorough search of its record holdings for the past 5 years), it
has had no contact with organisations called "Criminon" or "Narconon".

Please note that any revised request would be, in accordance with the
FOIA, a new request.

Please note that three authorities normally associated with the City of
London are legally separately responsible for their compliance with the
FOIA and are therefore not included in this response: the City of London
Police, the Museum of London, and the Sir John Cass's Foundation Primary
School (our only LEA school).

The FOIA applies to the CoL as a local authority, police authority and
port health authority. Subject to any other statutory provisions requiring
the City of London to disclose information, release of information outside
the scope of the Act is subject to the discretion of the City of London.

If you wish to make a complaint about the way the CoL has handled your
enquiry, please make your complaint in writing to email address:
[email address]. For a link to the CoL's FOI complaints
procedure, please visit the following page:
[1]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Feedback, at the end of which is located the
FOI complaints procedure. If, having used the CoL's FOI Complaints
Procedure, you are still dissatisfied, you may request the Information
Commissioner to investigate. Please contact: Information Commissioner,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Telephone:
(01625) 545700. Website: [2]http://www.ico.gov.uk/.

The CoL holds the copyright in this communication. Its supply does not
give a right to re-use in a way that would infringe that copyright, for
example, by making copies, publishing and issuing copies to the public or
to any other person. Brief extracts of any of the material may be
reproduced under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 (sections 29 and 30) for the purposes of research for
non-commercial purposes, private study, criticism, review and news
reporting, subject to an acknowledgement of the copyright owner.

Information Officer
City of London
Tel: 020-7332 1209
[3]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

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