Correspondence between Lyn Garner, Direcor of Regeneration LB Haringey, and Lendlease

The request was refused by Haringey Borough Council.

Dear Haringey Borough Council,

Please provide all email correspondence between Ms Lyn Garner and any Lendlease employee, or agency acting on behalf of Lendlease, during financial years 2014/2015, 2015/16, 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 to date.

I am requesting correspondence relating to regeneration schemes in the N17 postcode area of Tottenham.

If any of this information is regarded as privileged please indicate, and provide legal reasons

Yours faithfully

Hilary Adams

Haringey Borough Council

Dear Ms Adams

 

Freedom of Information / Environmental Information Regulations Request:
LBH/6659517

 

I acknowledge your request for information received on 02 October 2017.

 

This information request will be dealt with in accordance with the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 / Environmental Information Regulations and we
will send the response by 30 October 2017

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Feedback and Information Governance

 

Shared Service Centre | Central Team

Haringey Council 

10th Floor, Alexandra House, 10 Station Road, Wood Green, London N22 7TR

 

www.haringey.gov.uk

twitter@haringeycouncil

facebook.com/haringeycouncil

 

 

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential, may be
subject to legal privilege and are intended only for the person(s) or
organisation(s) to whom this email is addressed. Any unauthorised use,
retention, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If
you have received this email in error, please notify the system
administrator at Haringey Council immediately and delete this e-mail from
your system. Although this e-mail and any attachments are believed to be
free of any virus or other defect which might affect any computer or
system into which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility
of the recipient to ensure they are virus free and no responsibility is
accepted for any loss or damage from receipt or use thereof. All
communications sent to or from external third party organisations may be
subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant
legislation.

De Souza Darrell, Haringey Borough Council

Dear Ms Adams,

 

I am writing in response to your recent FOI requests received in September
and October 2017, please see table below for details:

 

Receipt Reference
Date Number Summary
copies of any
record or
minutes of
meetings held
between
Cabinet
members
regarding the
HDV Shadow
Board since
15/09/2017 LBH/6615517 January 2017.
copies that
have been
received or
sent by Cllr.
Elin Weston,
of any notes,
memorandum or
email that
record
decisions
made, or
summarise
meetings of
the HDV Shadow
Board since
31st March
15/09/2017 LBH/6616017 2017.
correspondence
between all of
the following
Councillors
and Council
Officers with
Lendlease
since January
2014.  Dan
Hawthorn, Zena
Etheridge,
Lorna Reith,
Lyn Gardner,
Joe Goldberg,
Alan
Strickland,
and Clare
15/09/2017 LBH/6617917 Kober,
correspondence
between all
Cabinet
members and
all members of
Housing and
Regeneration
Scrutiny
Committee with
Cllr Claire
Kober and Cllr
Alan
Strickland
relating to
the Lend
Lease/Council
HDV Shadow
Board since
17/09/2017 LBH/6615317 January 2017.
copies of all
emails between
Officers Dan
Hawthorn, Zena
Etheridge and
Lyn Gardner
with all
cabinet
members
regarding HDV
Shadow Board
since January
21/09/2017 LBH/6630817 2017.
copies of all
emails between
Officers Dan
Hawthorn, Zena
Etheridge and
Lyn Gardner
with all
elected
members
excluding
those
currently on
the cabinet
regarding HDV
Shadow Board
since January
21/09/2017 LBH/6631017 2017.
copies of all
emails to
councillors
from residents
or press that
have been
passed to
Lendlease
along with a
copy of any
covering email
accompanying
such
correspondence
copied since
21/09/2017 LBH/6631117 July 2016.
copies of all
correspondence
between Cllrs
Strickland and
Kober with
Lendlease
since January
21/09/2017 LBH/6631217 2017.
all email
correspondence
between Ms Lyn
Garner and any
Lendlease
employee, or
agency acting
on behalf of
Lendlease,
during
financial
years
2014/2015,
2015/16,
2016/2017 and
2017/2018 to
date.
I am
requesting
correspondence
relating to
regeneration
schemes in the
N17 postcode
area of
Tottenham.
If any of this
information is
regarded as
privileged
please
indicate, and
provide legal
02/10/2017 LBH/6659517 reasons

 

We have estimated that it will cost more than the ‘appropriate limit’ to
respond to your requests. Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act
allows public authorities to refuse requests for information where the
cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for
local government is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one
person spending 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the
information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

 

When calculating the cost, we can aggregate your requests received in the
last three months and include the time we have already spent on the
responses to the three requests we have already responded to.

 

FOI requests responded:

 

Please provide
copies of email
correspondence
and minutes of
meetings
relating to the
HDV between the
External Audit
team and Cllrs
Kober, Barbara
Blake and
25/04/2017 LBH/6221817 Strickland
Further
questions
relating to
LBH/6221817.

 

You mention a
meeting to be
held between
the External
Auditor and
several
officers and
elected members
on 19th April. 
I wish to
request the
following.

 

Did this
meeting take
place, if so
who attended
and what format
was used to
conduct the
meeting.

Please provide
copy of any
notes,
briefings,
power point
presentations
or slides used
at or in
preparation of
12/07/2017 LBH/6419917 the meeting.
Please supply
minutes of the
following
meetings.   If
such minutes do
not exist
please supply
records kept of
meeting
conclusions/
decisions in
whatever format
held.

 

1.    Fri
24/02/2012  -
Taking
Tottenham
Forward:
sharing the
recommendations
of the
Community Panel
(Spurs).

 

2.    Meeting
with Tottenham
Hotspur to
discuss
Masterplan -
Mon

26/11/2012
13:00-14:30 –
Cllr Kober,
Cllr
Strickland, Lyn
Garner (LBOH),
31/08/2017 LBH/6558617 Anne Albayrak.

 

In order to respond to your requests for correspondence between named
people, we need to ask each of those people to search their correspondence
to look for anything sent to/from the people you have listed. They would
then need to review that correspondence to see if it relates to the topics
identified in your requests. In many cases, these are people that would be
in regular contact with each other about other matters. This is a time
consuming process, especially considering the number of officers and
subjects that you have identified.

 

Your requests as they stand exceed the cost/time limit and we therefore
will not respond to them. You may wish to reconsider your request and
submit a more focussed request for specific information. It may be that we
can provide information that is equally useful to your purpose without
using so much staff time. If you tell us your reason for wanting this
information, we may be better able to advise on alternative approaches.

 

You have submitted a significant number of requests on this topic which is
placing an unreasonable burden on the authority. If you continue to submit
so many far reaching requests we will have to consider refusing your
requests under the manifestly unreasonable (EIR) or vexatious provisions
(FOIA) of the legislation.

 

If you have any further queries, or are unhappy with how we have dealt
with your request and wish to make a complaint, please contact the
Feedback and Information Team as below. (Please note you should do this
within two months of receiving this response.)

 

Feedback and Information Team

10th Floor, Alexandra House

10 Station Road

London

N22 7TR

E [1][email address]

 

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO), although generally the ICO
cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the complaints procedure
within Haringey Council.  The contact details for the ICO are:

 

FOI/ EIR Complaints Resolution

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

 

Telephone: 01625 545 745

Email: : [2][email address]

Website: [3]www.ico.org.uk

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Darrell De Souza

Haringey Council

 

 

This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential, may be
subject to legal privilege and are intended only for the person(s) or
organisation(s) to whom this email is addressed. Any unauthorised use,
retention, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If
you have received this email in error, please notify the system
administrator at Haringey Council immediately and delete this e-mail from
your system. Although this e-mail and any attachments are believed to be
free of any virus or other defect which might affect any computer or
system into which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility
of the recipient to ensure they are virus free and no responsibility is
accepted for any loss or damage from receipt or use thereof. All
communications sent to or from external third party organisations may be
subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant
legislation.

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[email address]
2. mailto:[email address]
3. http://www.ico.org.uk/

Dear De Souza Darrell,
Thank you for your response, it is not my wish to cause unnecessary expense or work for the council, I am well aware of the financial constraints upon all public services and appreciate that valuable officer time should not be wasted. One of those vital services is that provided by your department as the public's ability to scrutinise the actions of elected members and chief officers is an important element of a healthy democracy. You have included in your response the suggestion that a narrowing of focus may assist your ability to meet my request within your assessment of cost. I seek advice as to what information you assess it will be possible to provide within the limit. I copy below an extract from the relevant Guidance which informs this aspect.

Guidance document from Information Commissioners Office

Requests where the cost of compliance
exceeds the appropriate limit
Freedom of Information Act

62.
A public authority should inform the requestor of what information can be provided within the appropriate limit. This is important for two reasons: firstly, because a failure to do so
may result in a breach of section 16. Secondly, because doing so is more useful than
just advising the requestor to ‘narrow’ the request or be more specific in focus. Advising requestors to narrow their requests without indicating what information a public authority is able to provide within the limit, will often just result in requestors making new requests that still exceed the appropriate limit.

Yours sincerely,

Hilary Adams

FOI, Haringey Borough Council

Dear Ms Adams,

Thank you for your email to Mr De Souza dated 14 October 2017 11:10. We are aware of the ICO guidance and would normally suggest an alternative approach in cases where the scope of requests is too broad. That is difficult to do in this case when your requests have primarily been for copies of email exchanges between specific individuals. It is not clear what the purpose of these requests is or how the release of email exchanges between individuals could be of any value to you or the public as a whole. We asked you to give an indication of why you were asking for the information in order to help us to advise further. If we know what it is you were hoping to find out, we could perhaps direct you to the best source of that information. I trust you are aware that there is information published on our website about the HDV. All decisions are made through the democratic process and details of all council meetings (including the background papers considered by Councillors) are also published on our website.

Yours,

Anita Hunt
Feedback & Information Governance Manager
Shared Service Centre | Central Team
Alexandra House 10th Floor, 10 Station Road, London N22 7TR
020 8489 1844
This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential, may be subject to legal privilege and are intended only for the person(s) or organisation(s) to whom this email is addressed. Any unauthorised use, retention, distribution, copying or disclosure is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please notify the system administrator at Haringey Council immediately and delete this e-mail from your system. Although this e-mail and any attachments are believed to be free of any virus or other defect which might affect any computer or system into which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure they are virus free and no responsibility is accepted for any loss or damage from receipt or use thereof. All communications sent to or from external third party organisations may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.

Dear FOI,
Thank you for your response. You have asked me to clarify what information I am seeking.

The issue of public interest that I am seeking is detail relating to the shadow board. The only public reference I am aware of is a short paragraph in Cabinet papers that referenced a proposed plan to some shadow arrangements pending signing of contract with Lend Lease.

An FOI in the public domain has revealed a number of meetings and social events have taken place with the members of that board for which no records appear to be publicly available either of the agenda and how agenda items were decided or of the matters then discussed or decided by subsequent meetings/events. The process and selection criteria by which the council participants in that board were chosen does not appear to be in the public domain either yet is of wider interest in view of the proposed plan to dispose of vast quantities of public assets.

As no formal records appear to exist it seemed the only record of the relevant decisions might be held within the email correspondence of involved councillors and Chief Officers and Lend Lease. As I am not party to the detail of who has responsibility in this matter or for that matter which councillors may have submitted questions in this matter I was left to make my best guess. If you can clarify which of these are the most involved that will greatly assist my efforts to narrow down my requests.

It will also help me to narrow down my request if you can also inform me how much time you have already spent on the previous FOI's submitted within the 3 month period you quote as it will help me narrow down the requests to a more manageable number that you will be able to reasonably respond to. To assist your work I will today be withdrawing one or more of the questions you list thus reducing the total outstanding questions you have refused due to reasons of cost.

Yours sincerely,

Hilary Adams

FOI, Haringey Borough Council

Dear Ms Adams,
 
Thank you for your email. It is enough for you to tell us what information
you are hoping to obtain, there is no need for you to speculate as to who
might hold the information you seek or be in involved in discussions about
it; that is for us to do and is a normal part of dealing with an FOI
request. I believe that we now have a sufficient understanding of what it
is you are asking for, although it would be helpful if you could provide
details of "an FOI in the public domain" given that you refer to it.
 
Perhaps I could paraphrase your request as follows:
 
any information that we hold regarding the Shadow Board, its
establishment, composition, how Haringey Council participants were
selected and records of any meetings, including agenda items.
 
Just to be clear and to avoid you in unnecessary correspondence with us,
the response from Mr De Souza dated 13 October 2017 15:39 is our response
to your FOI requests listed in that response. Those requests have been
answered and are not outstanding. We have invited you to submit a more
focused, specific request which you have now done. If you are able to
confirm that you are happy with my summary of your request (and provide
details of the other request you refer to, if you have the details to
hand), we can record this as a new request and respond to it.
 
Yours,
 
Anita Hunt
Feedback & Information Governance Manager
Shared Service Centre | Central Team
Alexandra House 10th Floor, 10 Station Road, London N22 7TR
020 8489 1844
 
[email address]
 
[1]www.haringey.gov.uk
twitter@haringeycouncil
facebook.com/haringeycouncil
 
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