Costs you incurred for Zola workfare hosts litigation against DWP?

The request was successful.

Dear Information Commissioner’s Office,

RE: Department for Work And Pensions v The Information Commissioner & Zola [2016] EWCA Civ 758 (27 July 2016)

The DWP says it incurred nearly £100,000* for it's Zola litigation. What are the actual and estimated costs incurred by the ICO for this litigation, from the date of the first complaints to the ICO by the FOI requesters about the DW's P initial refusals and the final outcome of the Court of Appeal ordering the DWP to release the names of the workfare hosts?

* https://mrfrankzola.wordpress.com/2016/0...

Yours faithfully,

Frank Zola

AccessICOinformation, Information Commissioner's Office

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Information Commissioner's Office

9 September 2016

 

Case Reference Number IRQ0643232

 

Dear Mr Zola

Information request
 
I write in response to your email of 23 August 2016 in which you submitted
a request for information to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
Your request has been dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of
Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
 
Your request
 
“RE: Department for Work And Pensions v The Information Commissioner &
Zola [2016] EWCA Civ 758 (27 July 2016)

The DWP says it incurred nearly £100,000* for it's Zola litigation. What
are the actual and estimated costs incurred by the ICO for this
litigation, from the date of the first complaints to the ICO by the FOI
requesters about the DW's P initial refusals and the final outcome of the
Court of Appeal ordering the DWP to release the names of the workfare
hosts?”
 
Our response
 
I can confirm we hold information that falls in the scope of your request.
 
Information held/not held
 
Our staff do not record the time spent on handling any specific case and
as such we are unable to provide an estimate of internal costs based on
hours worked as we do not hold any recorded information in relation to
this.
 
However, we do hold records of travel, accommodation and incidental
expenses relating to our employees attending the 2016 Court of Appeal
hearing and this resulted in a total cost of £701.15.
 
We do not hold any further information about internal costs that falls in
the scope of your request.
 
I can confirm we engaged external legal counsel for the appeals to the
First-tier Tribunal, Upper Tribunal and Court of Appeal. The total
external legal expenditure for these appeals was: £7230.00
 
Therefore, in relation to this matter our internal and external
expenditure comes to a figure of £7931.15.  

This concludes our response to your request. I hope the information
provided is helpful.
 
Review Procedure

If you are not satisfied that your request for information has been dealt
with correctly, please write to the Information Access Team at the address
below, reply directly to this email (with the reference number contained
within the square brackets left intact), or email us at
[1][ICO request email], quoting the reference number
IRQ0643232.
Your request for a review should be submitted to us within 40 working days
of receipt by you of this response.  Any such request received after this
time will only be considered at the discretion of the Commissioner.

Ultimately if you are not satisfied that your request for information has
been dealt with correctly you have a further right of appeal to this
office in our capacity as the statutory complaint handler under the
relevant legislation.  To make such an application, please write to our
Customer Contact Team at the address below, or visit the ‘Report a
Concern’ section of our website.
 

Yours sincerely

Ian Goddard
Lead Information Access Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire SK9 5AF
T. 01625 545823  F. 01625 524510  [2]ico.org.uk  [3]twitter.com/iconews
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The ICO's mission is to uphold information rights in the public interest.
To find out more about our work please visit our website, or subscribe to
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please inform the sender by return email and destroy all copies without
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