Treatment of Freedom of Information Requests - Subjects - Outcomes - Time to Respond

Marlon Campbell made this Freedom of Information request to Newham Borough Council

The request was partially successful.

From: Marlon Campbell

19 January 2010

Dear Newham Borough Council,

For the 100 most recent FOI requests which the council considers
closed, be that because the request was rejected, met, or declared
"not held", please provide the following information:

(1) The date the request was received by the council.

(2) The summary subject of the request - in less than 20 words

(3) The date the request was acknowledged.

(4) The date the initial final response was given

(5) The status of this response, ie met, not held, rejected

(6) Whether an Internal Review was requested, and if so the date on
which this was completed and the outcome status

(7) Whether the FOI Request to the council's knowledge was referred
to the ICO.

(8) Whether the ICO issued any guidance or instruction to the
council following this referral.

(9) The final outcome after the ICO referral.

It is understood that a case may be referred to the ICO after the
council regards it a closed, and so this list request may not be
final and definitive, but at any given time, a FOI Request must be
either open or closed as far as the council, is considered.

This FOI Request is asking about the situation when it is
processed, and a snapshot should be taken, with the date of this
recorded in the reply.

As most of this information must already be held electronically for
administrative reasons by the council, it should not be onerous to
provide it.

Please provide this electronically, preferably in an XLS
spreadsheet.

Yours faithfully,

Marlon Campbell

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Newham Borough Council

19 January 2010

REQUESTER REFERENCE: C3162
ENQUIRY REFERENCE: E5565
Please quote your references when contacting the Council.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Freedom of Information Act 2000. FOI Requests.

Thank you for your request for information received on 19/01/2010. We
are dealing with your request and plan to respond before 16/02/2010.

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact the Information
Governance Team on 020 8430 3737 or email us at:
[Newham Borough Council request email]

Yours Faithfully

Information Governance Team
Newham Council

Newham Council Publication Scheme is on: www.newham.gov.uk

NOTE: This communication is sent for and on behalf of the London Borough of Newham.
However the views expressed within it are not necessarily the views or policies of the Council. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or alteration of this communication and any attachments is forbidden. This communication and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and may be confidential. If this has come to you in error you should immediately permanently destroy it.
You should take no action based on it or copy or show it to anyone and telephone the Council immediately with any issues on 0208 430 4444 or any other number provided in the communication. Please note that electronic communication is not considered a secure medium for sending information and therefore maybe at risk.
We advise that you understand and accept this lack of security when using this form of communication with us. Although we have taken steps to ensure that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free and should run current anti-virus software. Please note that email may be monitored and checked to safeguard the council network from viruses, hoax messages or abuse of the Council's systems. Action may be taken against any malicious and deliberate attempts to infect the council network.
The information contained in this email maybe subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Unless the information is legally exempt from disclosure the confidentiality of this email and your reply cannot be guaranteed.

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From: Marlon Campbell

17 February 2010

Dear Newham Borough Council,

I note that the 20 working day deadline has passed without any
response being provided to my FOI Request.

This is very disappointing.

The Request was a straight forward one, and I see no reason why the
council could not provider its response within the statutory limit
of 20wd.

Please give an indication of a date by when the council expects to
provide its reply - as otherwise a reference to the ICO will become
necessary.

Yours faithfully,

Marlon Campbell

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Newham Borough Council

18 February 2010

Dear Sir,

We are presently looking into this matter, and will provide you with a
response, as soon as possible.

Regards,

Information Governance.

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Newham Borough Council

19 February 2010

Attachment image003.png
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Attachment image004.jpg
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Attachment Response.pdf
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Attachment Newham Council Appeal Process.pdf
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Dear Mr. Campbell,

Please find attached our response to your Freedom of Information request.

Regards

Information Governance

Newham Council

Resources Directorate

London Borough of Newham

PO Box 65911 I London E6 9GZ

DDI: 020 3373 2645 I Int: 32645

[1]Click here for map

[2]www.newham.gov.uk

[3]cid:image004.jpg@01C9EF3C.4A5AA320

[4]http://www.newham.gov.uk/Rapid/images/eo...

NOTE: This communication is sent for and on behalf of the London Borough
of Newham.

However the views expressed within it are not necessarily the views or
policies of the Council. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or
alteration of this communication and any attachments is forbidden. This
communication and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and
may be confidential. If this has come to you in error you should
immediately permanently destroy it.

You should take no action based on it or copy or show it to anyone and
telephone the Council immediately with any issues on 0208 430 4444 or any
other number provided in the communication. Please note that electronic
communication is not considered a secure medium for sending information
and therefore maybe at risk.

We advise that you understand and accept this lack of security when using
this form of communication with us. Although we have taken steps to ensure
that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in
keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are
actually virus free and should run current anti-virus software. Please
note that email may be monitored and checked to safeguard the council
network from viruses, hoax messages or abuse of the Council's systems.
Action may be taken against any malicious and deliberate attempts to
infect the council network.

The information contained in this email maybe subject to public disclosure
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Unless the information is
legally exempt from disclosure the confidentiality of this email and your
reply cannot be guaranteed.

References

Visible links
1. http://maps.live.com/?v=2&where1=E16...
2. http://www.newham.gov.uk/
4. http://www.newham.com/2012games

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From: Marlon Campbell

22 February 2010

Dear Newham Borough Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Newham Borough
Council's handling of my FOI request 'Treatment of Freedom of
Information Requests - Subjects - Outcomes - Time to Respond'.

Thank you for your response.
I note your duty under ยง16 to be helpful.

(1) Q1-Q5
I asked for an XLS spreadsheet, but you have provided a PDF with a
number of pages with some individual data items spread over more
than one page.
Unfortunately this means that the format is unusable for analysis.

(2) Q1-Q5 - I asked about FOI Requests
I did not ask about DPA SAR requests.
Although it is mildly interesting to note that according to your
PDF more than half your FOI Request are deemed to be personal data,
I say these should be excluded from your response.
In any event, these should have Response Date - presumably when you
wrote back and said they are not FOI Requests but DPA SAR's.

Q5 - As to outcome, where all the information is not provided, a
word of explanation, such as the section applied should be
included.

(3) Q6
I also asked about any Internal Reviews.
You have not addressed this issue.

(4) I have read your Complaint / Internal Review procedure.
While this system may be fine for an ordinary complaint, it does
not comply with ICO guidance.

I quote from their "Internal Review Time Limits - Good Practice
GPG5"

"In view of all the above the Commissioner considers that a
reasonable time for completing an internal review is 20 working
days from the date of the request for review. There may be a small
number of cases which involve exceptional circumstances where it
may be reasonable to take longer. In those circumstances, the
public authority should, as a matter of good practice, notify the
requester and explain why more time is needed. In our view, in no
case should the total time taken exceed 40 working days. In such
cases we would expect a public authority to be able to demonstrate
that it had commenced the review procedure promptly following
receipt of the request for review and had actively worked on the
review throughout that period.

"Some public authorities have complaints procedures which have a
number of stages or levels. The Commissioner does not expect an
internal review of a response to an FOI request to have more than
one stage. Given that this is a review of a statutory process with
clear rights for requesters and obligations on public authorities,
a degree of formality is expected."

The ICO say that there should be no more than one stage for
Internal Review, and that this should take no more than 20wd,
before a reference to the ICO is allowed.
You describe a 3-stage process, and allow up to 50wd for this.
You need to amend your Internal Review process to make it compliant
with ICO guidance.

(5) Please provide me with an XLS spreadsheet with the data I asked
for.
The obvious way would be to provide the information in the PDF as
an XLS file, with columns added for any Internal Reviews and
outcomes.

However, you will need to provide the 100 FOI requests, not about
45 FOI and 55 DPA SAR - as the data is in a PDF rather than a
spreadsheet, I cannot sort and reorder it, and there is no simple
way to reliably count how many of each there are.

(6) Please also review your handling of complaints about response
to FOI requests.

Clearly a Requester could seek clarification or more detail
following a response.

However if the response is generally not satisfactory, such as
here, it should go straight to a 1-stage Internal Review.

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

Yours faithfully,

Marlon Campbell

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Newham Borough Council

22 February 2010

REQUESTER REFERENCE: C3237
ENQUIRY REFERENCE: E5731
Please quote your references when contacting the Council.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Freedom of Information Act 2000. FOI Reviews.

Thank you for your request for information received on 22/02/2010. We
are dealing with your request and plan to respond before 22/03/2010.

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact the Information
Governance Team on 020 8430 3737 or email us at:
[Newham Borough Council request email]

Yours Faithfully

Information Governance Team
Newham Council

Newham Council Publication Scheme is on: www.newham.gov.uk

NOTE: This communication is sent for and on behalf of the London Borough of Newham.
However the views expressed within it are not necessarily the views or policies of the Council. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or alteration of this communication and any attachments is forbidden. This communication and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and may be confidential. If this has come to you in error you should immediately permanently destroy it.
You should take no action based on it or copy or show it to anyone and telephone the Council immediately with any issues on 0208 430 4444 or any other number provided in the communication. Please note that electronic communication is not considered a secure medium for sending information and therefore maybe at risk.
We advise that you understand and accept this lack of security when using this form of communication with us. Although we have taken steps to ensure that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free and should run current anti-virus software. Please note that email may be monitored and checked to safeguard the council network from viruses, hoax messages or abuse of the Council's systems. Action may be taken against any malicious and deliberate attempts to infect the council network.
The information contained in this email maybe subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Unless the information is legally exempt from disclosure the confidentiality of this email and your reply cannot be guaranteed.

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Newham Borough Council

25 February 2010

Dear Mr. Campbell,

Thank you for your for appeal / complaint, which we are dealing with and will respond to within the next 10 working days from the date your complaint was received.

A response will be sent before 8th March 2010.

Regards

Ian Gibbs
Information Governance
Newham Council

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Newham Borough Council

8 March 2010

Attachment Appeal Response.pdf
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Attachment Requests v1.1.xls
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Dear Mr Campbell,

Please find attached our respond to your Freedom of Information appeal.

Regards

Information Governance

Newham Council

Resources Directorate

London Borough of Newham

PO Box 65911 I London E6 9GZ

DDI: 020 3373 2645 I Int: 32645

[1]Click here for map

[2]www.newham.gov.uk

NOTE: This communication is sent for and on behalf of the London Borough
of Newham.

However the views expressed within it are not necessarily the views or
policies of the Council. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or
alteration of this communication and any attachments is forbidden. This
communication and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and
may be confidential. If this has come to you in error you should
immediately permanently destroy it.

You should take no action based on it or copy or show it to anyone and
telephone the Council immediately with any issues on 0208 430 4444 or any
other number provided in the communication. Please note that electronic
communication is not considered a secure medium for sending information
and therefore maybe at risk.

We advise that you understand and accept this lack of security when using
this form of communication with us. Although we have taken steps to ensure
that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in
keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are
actually virus free and should run current anti-virus software. Please
note that email may be monitored and checked to safeguard the council
network from viruses, hoax messages or abuse of the Council's systems.
Action may be taken against any malicious and deliberate attempts to
infect the council network.

The information contained in this email maybe subject to public disclosure
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Unless the information is
legally exempt from disclosure the confidentiality of this email and your
reply cannot be guaranteed.

References

Visible links
1. http://maps.live.com/?v=2&where1=E16...
2. http://www.newham.gov.uk/

Link to this

Newham Borough Council

15 September 2010

REQUESTER REFERENCE: C3162
ENQUIRY REFERENCE: E7246
Please quote your references when contacting the Council.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Freedom of Information Act 2000

Thank you for your request for information received regarding traffic management orders on 13/09/2010. We are dealing with your request and plan to respond before 11/10/2010.

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact the Information Governance Team on 020 8430 3737 or email us at: [Newham Borough Council request email]

Yours Faithfully

Information Governance Team
Newham Council

Newham Council Publication Scheme is on: www.newham.gov.uk

NOTE: This communication is sent for and on behalf of the London Borough of Newham.
However the views expressed within it are not necessarily the views or policies of the Council. The unauthorised use, disclosure, copying or alteration of this communication and any attachments is forbidden. This communication and any attachments are intended for the addressee only and may be confidential. If this has come to you in error you should immediately permanently destroy it.
You should take no action based on it or copy or show it to anyone and telephone the Council immediately with any issues on 020 8430 2000 or any other number provided in the communication. Please note that electronic communication is not considered a secure medium for sending information and therefore maybe at risk.
We advise that you understand and accept this lack of security when using this form of communication with us. Although we have taken steps to ensure that this email and attachments are free from any virus, we advise that in keeping with good computing practice the recipient should ensure they are actually virus free and should run current anti-virus software. Please note that email may be monitored and checked to safeguard the council network from viruses, hoax messages or abuse of the Council's systems. Action may be taken against any malicious and deliberate attempts to infect the council network.
The information contained in this email maybe subject to public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Unless the information is legally exempt from disclosure the confidentiality of this email and your reply cannot be guaranteed.

Link to this

From: Marlon Campbell

15 September 2010

Dear Newham Borough Council,

You have replied to the wrong FOI Request here.

This enquiry was completed in March.

The response you have sent should have been sent in response to
this FOI Request:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/tr...

Please send to the correct address.

Yours faithfully,

Marlon Campbell

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