What is the cost of equipment and staff required to report the national indicators for local government

Dear Brian Hunt,

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Our standard is to reply within ten working days.
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if you quote reference number: 4128

Kind Regards
Sharon at HertsDirect
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Brian Hunt To FOI requests at
<[FOI #31479 email]> Hertfordshire County Council
<[Hertfordshire County Council request email]>
25/03/2010 07:27 cc
Subject Freedom of Information
request - What is the cost
of equipment and staff
required to report the
national indicators for
local government

Dear Hertfordshire County Council,

All councils have to report national indicators to central
government. What is the cost of the equipment snd staff required
for this 'performance management'? Please let me have the figures
for the last two years and the projected cost for this financial
year

Yours faithfully,

Brian Hunt

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Dear Mr Hunt,

Reference number: FOI/RAP/03/10/1986

On 25th March 2010 we received the following request for information from
you:

"All councils have to report national indicators to central
government. What is the cost of the equipment snd staff required
for this 'performance management'? Please let me have the figures
for the last two years and the projected cost for this financial
year"

Your request for information has been considered under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. I can confirm that Hertfordshire County Council
holds the information you have requested. However, we do not hold the
specific statistics you have asked for because we do not analyse the
relevant data to report on this particular relationship between equipment
costs, staff costs and time spent on reporting national indicators. It is
unlikely that any equipment is used solely to report national indicators
to central government, and it would be a complex and labour intensive task
to identify what proportion of equipment costs and staff costs were
directly involved with this work.

We estimate that the cost of carrying out this work would exceed the
appropriate limit of *450, which has been specified under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 and associated regulations. This represents the
estimated cost of one person spending 2* working days in determining
whether Hertfordshire County Council holds the information, and locating,
retrieving and extracting the information. Under Section 12 of the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 we are not obliged to comply with requests for
information which exceed this appropriate limit, and will not be
undertaking this work.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me, quoting
the reference number on this letter. To find out more about Freedom of
Information, please visit www.hertsdirect.org/foi

If you are unhappy with the way the County Council has handled your
request for information, you may complain through the County Council's
complaints procedure which is available at www.hertsdirect.org/complaints

If you are unhappy with the outcome of the complaints procedure you are
entitled to ask the Information Commissioner to investigate your
complaint. You should write to: FOI/EIR Complaints Resolution, Information
Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9
5AF.

Yours sincerely,

Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

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Dear Mr Hunt,
Thank you for your email of 28th April 2010.

Whilst all local authorities are required to provide information for
national indicators, they generally relate to figures which we also
collect for our own internal management purposes. In many cases the
systems were purchased to provide this information before the national
indicator was established. For example, there is a national indicator in
relation to the number of visitors to our libraries but this is something
which we have reported on as part of the County Council's Annual Report on
Libraries for many years, no further investment or work was required to
provide this as a national indicator.

In some instances information for Hertfordshire would be provided by the
District and Borough Councils, rather than by the County Council.

No IT systems or software have been purchased solely or primarily for the
purpose of producing information for national indicators, nor is it a
significant amount of work, therefore it is not an identifiable item
within our budgeting processes.

Because of the above, in order to answer your request we would have to
look at every system from which some information that currently relates to
a national indicator is taken. We would then have to estimate the capital
and running costs for that system and identify what proportion of its
total function goes to providing the national indicator and use that as an
means to estimate the cost. As previously stated, we estimate that the
work which would be involved in this exercise would exceed the 2.5 days
work (or *450) which the Freedom of Information Act 2000 defines as
reasonable for public authorities to undertake in responding to requests.

However, being mindful of the County Council's duty to advise and assist,
we can provide costs for the Place survey which local authorities were
required to conduct for some national indicators in 2008. The Place
survey is biennial and in Hertfordshire is conducted jointly with the
district and borough councils. The costs for the 2008/09 survey - in
total, including analysis of the survey - was *177,562.55 which was paid
largely by the district and borough councils with the contribution from
Hertfordshire County Council amounting to approximately *16,000.

The indicative costs for the 2010/11 survey are based on current
assumptions of what we expect the Department for Communities and Local
Government's requirements to be, so they are subject to change. However,
we would anticipate that for the whole county (i.e. the ten districts and
the County Council) the cost of fieldwork and reporting would be slightly
lower than the 2008 costs.

Yours sincerely,

Information Governance Unit
Hertfordshire County Council
Telephone: 01992 555848
Fax: 01992 588117
Email: [email address]

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