Ami Wyllie
Cafcass National Office
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
3rd Floor
21 Bloomsbury Street
London
Your ref: CAF 18-053
WC1B 3HF
Our ref: Gov/CAF 18-053
Tel 0300 456 4000
08 May 2018
Dear Ms Wyllie,
Re: Freedom of Information Request
Thank you for your email of 23 April 2018. You made the following requests for information:
Number of section 7 reports in English courts that have been ordered by a judge/magistrate
and subsequently cancelled by CAFCASS in the last three years?
Cafcass does not ‘cancel’ S7 reports as the completion and filing of the report has
been ordered by the court. However, if the court orders the completion of a S7 report
by Cafcass, Cafcass may challenge this order if it feels this is inappropriate and it
may be withdrawn by the court but the circumstances for this must be exceptional.
For example, it may be appropriate that the S7 report should be completed by the
local authority rather than by Cafcass. However, these issues should be raised with
the court before a decision on the allocation of responsibility for a section 7 report is
made, where possible. Please see our
Good Practice Guidance: determining whether
Cafcass or a local authority should prepare a section 7 report which sets out when a
S7 report should be completed by the local authority.
Cafcass does not hold statistics or information on the number of S7 reports which
were ordered by the court to be completed by Cafcass but which were then
withdrawn or completed by the local authority. This information will be held in each
individual case file. In order to provide a response, each case file would need to be
checked individually; as Cafcass handles tens of thousands of cases annually, the
cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit which for Cafcass is £450. In
our estimation the cost (a flat rate of £25 per hour provided by the FOI Act) would
exceed the appropriate limit which is 18 hours for Cafcass, in order to complete one
or more of the following activities permitted to be accounted for, which are:
• Determining whether the information is held;
• Locating the information, or a document containing it;
• Retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
Baroness Tyler of Enfield Chair
Anthony Douglas CBE Chief Executive
Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, is a non-departmental body of the Ministry of Justice
Cafcass National Office, 3rd Floor, 21 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3HF
• Extracting the information from a document containing it.
A response to this request is therefore exempt under Section 12 of the Freedom of
Information Act.
12 Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.
1.
Section 1(1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information
if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the
appropriate limit.
2.
Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with
paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that
paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.
3.
In subsections (1) and (2) “the appropriate limit” means such amount as may be
prescribed, and different amounts may be prescribed in relation to different cases.
4.
The Secretary of State may by regulations provide that, in such circumstances as may
be prescribed, where two or more requests for information are made to a public
authority—
(a) by one person, or (b) by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in
concert or in pursuance of a campaign,
the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the
estimated total cost of complying with all of them.
5.
The Secretary of State may by regulations make provision for the purposes of this
section as to the costs to be estimated and as to the manner in which they are to be
estimated.
Of those cases, how many weeks after the section 7 report was ordered did CAFCASS
cancel the report?
Please see the answer to question one.
What reasons were judges/magistrates and parents given for the cancellation and what
process was put in place of the section 7 report?
Please see the answer to question one.
We hope that you feel your question has been answered effectively. If you are unhappy with
the decisions made in relation to your request, you may ask for an internal review to be
undertaken. If you are dissatisfied with the way the internal review is handled or with the
final decision made at that review about the information released, you are free to contact the
Information Commissioner’s Office
(https://ico.org.uk/):
Baroness Tyler of Enfield Chair
Anthony Douglas CBE Chief Executive
Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, is a non-departmental body of the Ministry of Justice
Cafcass National Office, 3rd Floor, 21 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3HF
Post
Fax
Information Commissioner's Office
01625 524 510
Wycliffe House, Water Lane,
Tel
Wilmslow,
0303 123 1113
Cheshire
E-mail
SK9 5AF
xxxxxxxx@xxx.xxx.xx
Yours sincerely,
Governance Team
Cafcass
xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Baroness Tyler of Enfield Chair
Anthony Douglas CBE Chief Executive
Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, is a non-departmental body of the Ministry of Justice
Cafcass National Office, 3rd Floor, 21 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3HF
Baroness Tyler of Enfield Chair
Anthony Douglas CBE Chief Executive
Cafcass, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, is a non-departmental body of the Ministry of Justice
Cafcass National Office, 3rd Floor, 21 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3HF