Emails from Coulsdon NP Roads Rep + LB Croydon Replies

The request was partially successful.

Dear Croydon Borough Council,

I wish to review the work of the Coulsdon NP Roads Rep over the past 2 years or so.

Please provide a list of the Emails sent by the Coulsdon NP Roads Rep to the council and the replies sent in return.

All that is needed in each case is the date and subject of the email, and the date and a single sentence summarising the reply, together with the
name of the officer replying.

Please list these in date order between 12-8-07 and 11-11-09.

To assist in compiling the list, I understand that most emails will have been sent to LBC Dave Wickens, LBC Dave Wakeling, LBC Dave Szostak or LBC Raymond Richards.

While there is no requirement to give any reason, these will be helpful in showing the way the council has responded to community concerns.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Douglas

Morris, Valerie, Croydon Borough Council

Dear Mr Douglas

Thank you for your letter email/letter dated 17 December 2009 in which you
have requested, information in relation to the work of Coulsdon NP Roads
Rep over the past 2 years.

We are considering your request under the terms of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, and hope to respond within the statutory 20 working
days.

In some circumstances a fee may be payable and if that is the case, either
myself or a colleague will let you know the likely charges before
proceeding.

If you have any queries about this email, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

Yours sincerely

Valerie Morris

Contract Monitoring Officer

Chief Executive's Office

Democratic & Legal Services Division

5th Floor South Side

Taberner House

Park Lane Croydon

CR9 3JS

Tel: 0208 686 4433 ext. 62676

Fax: 0208 760 5679

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Dear Morris, Valerie,

Under the FOI Act, the council is obliged to respond to a Request promptly, and in any event within 20 working days.

The 20 working day period expires in just over a week, yet the council has not even confirmed as yet whether it holds the requested information.

Could you kindly explain where there is any particular reason for the delay, and that in any event a full response will be provided within the time required by law?

Yours sincerely,

Michael Douglas

Dear Morris, Valerie,

As the FOI deadline has now passed without effective response from the council, please confirm whether the council intends to reply - and when - or should I ask the ICO to compel it to do so?

Yours sincerely,

Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas left an annotation ()

No reply within 20wd.

Referred to ICO on 25-1-10 for investigation.

Dear Croydon Borough Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Croydon Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Emails from Coulsdon NP Roads Rep + LB Croydon Replies'.

You acknowledged this FOI Request on 22-12-09.

I reminded you on 10-1-10 that a reply was due within a week.

On 20-1-10, I pointed out that you had not replied with the 20wd deadline laid down by law.

Please now reply to this FOI Request in a proper way.

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

Yours faithfully,

Michael Douglas

Derby, James, Croydon Borough Council

Dear Mr Douglas

Thank you for your letter email/letter dated 17 December 2009 in which you
have requested the information set below:

"Please provide a list of the Emails sent by the Coulsdon NP Roads Rep to
the council and the replies sent in return. All that is needed in each
case is the date and subject of the email, and the date and a single
sentence summarising the reply, together with the name of the officer
replying. Please list these in date order between 12-8-07 and 11-11-09. To
assist in compiling the list, I understand that most emails will have been
sent to LBC Dave Wickens, LBC Dave Wakeling, LBC Dave Szostak or LBC
Raymond Richards"

We have considered your request under the terms of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000, and apologise for the delay in writing. We note a
Freedom of information request which is exactly the same as yours above
was sent to the Council by another member of the public.

We have contacted the relevant officers of the Council regarding this
request and have been advised that the Council received several emails
from the Coulsdon Neighbourhood Partnership Roads Representative between
12 August 2007 and11 November 2009. Whilst you have not requested copies
of the emails, you have asked that the Council provide a summary of the
email including the date of the email, subject of email and summary of the
replies. You have particularly mentioned the names of four officers.
Please be advised that Mr Raymond Richards is no longer n employee of the
Council and we no longer have access to his outlook inbox; we are
therefore unable to provide information which was received or sent by him
to the Coulsdon NP Roads Rep. I can also confirm this is the same position
with Mr Wally Ross-Gower who dealt extensively with the Coulsdon NP Road
Rep.

My discussions with other officers including the officers specifically
mentioned in your request established the fact that emails sent or
received from the Coulsdon NP Road Rep since 2007 till November 2009 have
either being deleted or archived in the Council's systems and/or server.
We are therefore unable to process your request as it falls under the
exemption provided in Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

To provide the information you have requested, Council officers would need
to go through a large amount of documents and data on its systems and
server in order to locate, retrieve and extract all of the information
that you have requested. The cumulative time it would take Council
officers to do this added to the time officers have already taken to
establish whether or not the Council holds the information that you
request would exceed the "appropriate limit".

The appropriate limit has been specified in the Freedom of Information
(Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004 and for local authorities it
is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending
2½ working days in locating, retrieving and extracting the information
from where it is stored. Under Section 12 of the FOIA the Council is not
obliged to comply with your request as it falls within the Section 12
exemption and we will not be processing your request further.

If you are dissatisfied with the way the department has handled your
request under the Freedom of Information Act, you may ask for an internal
review. You can do this by outlining the details of your complaint and
either

e-mailing us at [Croydon Borough Council request email] faxing us on 0208 760 5679
writing to FOI Complaints, London Borough of Croydon, Democratic and
Legal Services, Croydon, CR9 3JS

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

James Derby

Corporate Solicitor

Legal & Democratic Services

London Borough of Croydon

Taberner House

Park Lane

CR9 3JS

Tel: 020 8760 5768 Ext. 61359

Fax: 020 8760 5679

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Dear Croydon Borough Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Croydon Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Emails from Coulsdon NP Roads Rep + LB Croydon Replies'.

This is not a helpful response.
Under the FOI Act, §16, the council is under an obligation to "provide advice and assistance, so far as it would be reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made, requests for information to it".

You have failed to comply with this.

If the council believes that the cost of of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate amount, you should say how much it would cost, for example by issuing a Fees Notice.

Please state how many hours the council estimates it would take to obtain the relevant information.

In any event, it is surprising if it would really take very long to search the council's server.

All you would have to do is to conduct an electronic search for documents sent to or from the individual concerned.
To avoid confusion with any personal correspondence with that individual,, you could add a search in the body of the text of the initial query for the NP title.

That computer search should take no more a few minutes to come up with results.

Extracting the number of items would be simple.

Please provide this number.

Please also state how long it would take to extract from the result of this search the information requested - when the date and subject of the query and the date and substance of the reply would be immediately to hand.

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

Yours faithfully,

Michael Douglas

Michael Douglas

Dear Derby, James,

I note with concern that more than a month has passed since I requested an Internal Review.

Please confirm by return when I may expect a reply, as I will otherwise have to refer this matter to the ICO once again.

Yours sincerely,

Michael Douglas

Passman, Howard, Croydon Borough Council

Dear Mr. Douglas,

Further to your email dated 12 February 2010, in which you requested a
review of the response provided to you regarding emails sent by the
Coulsdon Neighbourhood Roads Representative (CNRR). I have now completed
my review and I am able to provide you with the following information.
Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying to you.

I have been informed that the Council's email servers are backed up every
day, being only retained for two months. Where a user retains an email
within their mailbox beyond 30 days, it would be archived into that `users
archive'. Therefore the emails/information you requested, are no longer
held within the Council's `live' email system.

Following my investigations I am satisfied to provide the information you
have requested, that officers would need to go through a large amount of
documents/data in order to locate, retrieve and extract the information
requested. As you have previously been informed the cumulative time to
achieve this would exceed the "appropriate limit" as specified in the
Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

In an effort to provide assistance, I have obtained `screen prints' of
those user's archives that were readily available; which contain emails
from the CNRR (these contain the email title and date only, with no
summary of the email or any other information). However, before I can
provide you with this information, I wish to consult with the CNRR, to
inform them that I am considering releasing this information in response
to your request, and to obtain any views that they may have.

I will contact you again when I have their received response.

Yours sincerely

Howard Passman

Information Management Manager

Democratic & Legal Services Division

Southside, 5th Floor Taberner House

Park Lane, Croydon CR9 3JS

020 8726 6000 ext. 62318

www.croydon.gov.uk

www.croydononline.org (Community Website)

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Passman, Howard, Croydon Borough Council

1 Attachment

Dear Mr. Douglas,

Further to my email to you dated 16 March 2010, I have now been contacted
by the Coulsdon Neighbourhood Roads Representative (CNRR). He has
informed me that he has no objections to providing you with `screen
prints' of those emails that are available, to you.

As I confirmed in my previous email, I am able to provide you with `screen
prints' of those user's archives that were readily available; which
contain emails from the CNRR (these contain the email title and date only,
with no summary of the email or any other information). Therefore please
find attached a Pdf containing screen shots of those emails - (pages 1-11
were provided by Mr Wickens and pages 12 and 13 by Mr Szostak). I regret
that I am not able to provide you with any additional information.

As I informed you previously, the Council's email servers are backed up
every day, being only retained for two months. Therefore the
emails/information you originally requested, are no longer accessible
within the Council's `live' email system. Following my investigations I
am satisfied to provide the information you have requested, that officers
would need to go through a large amount of documents/data in order to
locate, retrieve and extract the information requested. As you have
previously been informed the cumulative time to achieve this would exceed
the "appropriate limit" as specified in the Freedom of Information (Fees
and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

o Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF

Yours sincerely

Howard Passman

Information Management Manager

Democratic & Legal Services Division

Southside, 5th Floor Taberner House

Park Lane, Croydon CR9 3JS

020 8726 6000 ext. 62318

www.croydon.gov.uk

www.croydononline.org (Community Website)

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