Subsidiary Companies and Clawback

The request was refused by One North East.

Dear One North East,

This request under the FOI Act is related to project related financial transactions with subsidiary companies and/or “Special Purpose Vehicles” and funding recipients’ breach of procurement requirements and "clawback" of grant by ONE North East for the financial years 2008/09, 2009/10 and 2010/11.

(1) Please list all subsidiary companies and/or “Special Purpose Vehicle” companies, ie companies that are either wholly owned by ONE North East (eg Enterprise Development North East Ltd) or have a financial tie such as "right of lien over all capital assets" held by ONE North East” (eg The Centre of Excellence in Digital Technology and Media Ltd trading as Codeworks).

(2) Please list details of any wholly owned subsidiary companies of the list provided in response to (1), eg The Centre of Excellence in Digital Technology and Media Ltd trading as Codeworks owns 100% of the issued share capital of Codeworks Enterprises Ltd.

(3) Please list all companies where ONE hold 30% or more issued shares and if the shareholding has been disposed of within the time period requested above please provide date of disposal and details of any financial consideration given in return of shares disposed, eg One North East had 40% of issued shares in NEL Management Group Ltd which was disposed of on the 6th August 2009 in exchange for £220,000 paid by NF Holdings Ltd.

(4) Please list any assets that have been disposed of by a subsidiary company (as provided in response to (1)) and please also provide details of date disposed, how disposal was fairly advertised/promoted, legal entity to whom the assets were transferred together with details of financial consideration given in return for those assets.

(5) Please list all ONE North East projects (including business case title, PMS project/reference number, amount of Single Programme funding, amount(s) of other funding, eg ERDF and date of project award) that have been awarded to companies provided in response to (1), (2) or (3) where a tendering process has not taken place.

(6) Please list all projects (including business case title, PMS project/reference number, amount of Single Programme funding, amount(s) of other funding, eg ERDF and date of project award) that have been awarded to companies provided in response to (1), (2) and (3) where a tendering process has taken place.

(7) Please list all projects (including business case title, PMS project/reference number, amount of Single Programme funding, amount(s) of other funding, eg ERDF and date of project award) that have been awarded to companies that have no connection with ONE North East (eg not listed in response to (1), (2) or (3)) and where a tendering process has not taken place, eg The Difference Engine / The Cloud Foundry PMS Project Number NE005325 project awarded £336K Single Programme, and £200K investment capital via the Design & Creative Fund managed by EDNE Ltd to the North East Business and Innovation Centre Ltd in October 2009.

re: Single Programme & European Funding Procurement Handbook (http://www.onenortheast.co.uk/page/erdfe...) "Funding recipients should be aware that a breach of procurement requirements is the most common reason for claw back of grant and the procedures must be carefully followed and monitored throughout the project to mitigate the risk of failing to procure correctly.It is therefore important to ensure that the procurement rules as set out in the Funding Allocation Letter (FAL) are strictly adhered to during the delivery of the project for the acquisition of services, supplies and/or Works in the delivery of the project."

(8) Please provide details of all instances of clawback carried out by ONE North East (including business case title, PMS project/reference number, amount of clawback, legal entity that was subject to the clawback and reason for clawback), eg The Difference Engine / The Cloud Foundry PMS Project Number NE005325, 25% of contract (£134K) from North East Business and Innovation Centre Ltd for "Non respect of sufficient degree of advertising" as per section 6.5 of Single Programme and European Funding Procurement Handbook (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/th...).

(9) Please provide details of all instances of breaches of procurement requirements where ONE North East is aware of the breach and has not pursued clawback. Please provide business case title, PMS project/reference number, potential clawback amount, legal entity that was subject to the breach, reason for the potential clawback and reason for not pursuing the clawback), eg The Difference Engine / The Cloud Foundry PMS Project Number NE005325, 25% of contract (£134K) from North East Business and Innovation Centre Ltd for "Non respect of sufficient degree of advertising" as per section 6.5 of Single Programme and European Funding Procurement Handbook (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/th...), not pursued due to...

Yours faithfully,

James Burke

Peter Judge, One North East

1 Attachment

Dear James

Please find attached a refusal notice under Section 14(1) of the Freedom
on Information Act 2000. The letter sets out details of the basis of this
decision and the steps you may take to challenge it, should you wish to do
so.

An original of this letter will be put in the post.

Yours sincerely,

Peter

Peter Judge LLB, LLM, Solicitor

Head of Legal Services and Procurement

Group Secretary

( 0191 229 6548

* [1][email address]

" [2]www.onenortheast.co.uk
One NorthEast, Stella House, Goldcrest Way, Newburn Riverside, Newcastle
upon Tyne, NE15 8NY

One North East - the regional development agency for North East England,
visit http://www.onenortheast.co.uk to find out more.

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References

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1. mailto:[email address]
mailto:[email address]
2. http://www.onenortheast.co.uk/
http://www.onenortheast.co.uk/

Peter Judge, One North East

1 Attachment

Dear James

Please find attached a refusal notice under Section 14(1) of the Freedom
on Information Act 2000. The letter sets out details of the basis of
this decision and the steps you may take to challenge it, should you
wish to do so.

An original of this letter will be put in the post.

Yours sincerely,

Peter

Peter Judge LLB, LLM, Solicitor

Head of Legal Services and Procurement

Group Secretary

* 0191 229 6548

* [email address] <mailto:[email address]>

" *www.onenortheast.co.uk <http://www.onenortheast.co.uk/>

One NorthEast, Stella House, Goldcrest Way, Newburn Riverside, Newcastle
upon Tyne, NE15 8NY

One North East - the regional development agency for North East England, visit http://www.onenortheast.co.uk to find out more.

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Dear Peter Judge,

The aim of this note is to provide a summary of the responses to this FOI request.

The Section 14(1) refusal notice states within the “reasoning” section that I have “submitted 149 separate requests for information since 3 December 2009” and that these requests “appear to lack any serious purpose or value”.

An internal review was requested on the 19th July 2010.

An internal review has been carried out and the refusal upheld by the Chief Executive of One North East, Alan Clarke, via a letter dated 23rd August 2010.

The internal review letter states that “I am satisfied that your FOI requests have been fully answered and internally reviewed where appropriate”. No mention of the “149” requests is made in the internal review letter.

The “149” requests relate to these 8 FOI requests which have been updated with summary notes similar to this one:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/su... (this one)
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fi...
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/su...
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/th...
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pr...
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/we...
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/di...
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/on...

As a Section 14(1) refusal notice has been issued and upheld following an internal review by One North East (http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/su...) it appears that I am unable to seek further clarifications raised in the responses received to the 8 FOI requests.

Yours sincerely,

James Burke

James Burke left an annotation ()

Awaiting review by the Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (http://www.bis.gov.uk/) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (http://www.ico.gov.uk/).

If you want to help support this investigation please see: http://helpmeinvestigate.com/investigati...

James Burke left an annotation ()

ICO case number FS50361346 allocated 11th January 2011

Maris Hunt left an annotation ()

Mr Burke

Noticed that this is on appeal. Could you furnish us with any details as I think this case is exceptionally interesting.

Many thanks
M Hunt