Tracy Maclennan
Cafcass National Office
3rd Floor
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
21 Bloomsbury Street
London
WC1B 3HF
Your ref: CAF 18-131
Our ref: Gov/CAF 18-131
Tel 0300 456 4000
07 December 2018
Dear Ms Maclennan,
Re: Freedom of Information Request
Thank you for your email of 17 November 2018. You made the following requests for
information:
How many applications have been made to revoke a special guardianship orders.
Please see below for the number of applications to discharge a Special Guardianship
Order received by Cafcass, broken down by financial year.
Financial Year
Number
of
applications
2013-14
28
2014-15
37
2015-16
59
2016-17
79
2017-18
109
2018-19 YTD (April – 81
December)
How many special guardianship orders have been revoked and the child/children
have returned to the parent/parents
Cafcass does not collect information on the outcome of cases concerning applications
to discharge or vary a Special Guardianship Order issue centrally. This information will
Edward Timpson CBE 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
be held in court orders in each individual case file. In order to provide a response, each
case file would need to be checked individually; 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
• 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.
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/):
Edward Timpson CBE 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
Edward Timpson CBE 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
Edward Timpson CBE 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