Archived Inquiry Reports for 2006

The request was partially successful.

Dear Charity Commission for England and Wales,

Please provide me with copies of all the Inquiry Reports
which you published during 2006 and which have since been
"Archived" ie removed from your website, as listed here:

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/our-...

If feasible I would prefer these to be provided as separate files, please - one file per report - rather than one big file. That makes it easier to find and refer to individual reports. If you must provide it as one big file, I'd appreciate it if you could provide a table of contents for it showing where each report starts.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Yours faithfully,

Ian Jackson

Dear Charity Commission for England and Wales,

Hi. This FOI request, and also my corresponding request for 2005[1], are overdue. Is there some difficulty ?

[1] https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...

Thanks for your attention.

Yours faithfully,

Ian Jackson

Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

Dear Mr Jackson

Thank you for your email. I am sorry that we have been unable to respond
to your request within the statutory 20 day timescale.

I am currently considering the best way forward here. We are treating this
as a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act (the
Act). The Act imposes a duty, set out in section 1 (1) (a) to confirm or
deny whether we hold this information. As I have explained previously when
we receive requests such as this we will either direct you to our website
if the report/s are still there or to the National Archives website if the
report/s have been archived.

In this case neither option is available to us. The reports have been
removed from our website and do not appear to be directly available via
the National Archives.  Having checked our records though, I see that we
still hold details of all the Inquiry reports that were published in 2005
and 2006.

I am trying to find out whether these reports remain available to the
public via any other route, and if so whether we can then direct you to
them. I appreciate that this would not sit easily with the exemption under
Section 21 (a process that as you know we are currently looking at) but in
the short term it would provide you with the information you would like.

Alternatively we may have to consider whether we can release each and
every report directly under the terms of the Act. Given that there are
over 100 reports for both 2005 and 2006 this may take us a little time and
we would have to provide an electronic copy of each one. This approach
will result in a significant amount of information being sent to you.  I
would be grateful, then, if you could confirm that you would be willing to
accept the information in this format.  

I am confident that we will be able to get this information to you.
Unfortunately, though, it may take a little longer than we would like. I
will keep you updated as we progress.

Regards

Liam Carroll

Complaints and FOI Manager

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Dear Laim Carroll

Thanks for your candid reply. I'd like to emphasise that, despite what I'm about to say, I have no complaint about you personally; you have consistently been clear, courteous and professional.

I'm not sure I really understand the Charity Commission's difficulty. The Commission has the reports. Given that they were previously published by the Commission I can't see any reason why they can't simply be released to me right away.

Are you having difficulty locating the electronic copies which were previously published on the Commission's website ?

For the avoidance of doubt: yes, please, I would like all these reports sent to me in electronic format via What Do They Know. It's probably most convenient to do this in a series of emails rather than one big email but any means that works from a technical point of view is fine by me.

I'm sorry to say that I think the Commission's approach here is rather obstructive. You have had a month to find the previously published pdfs and email them to me. Unless you can explain to me what the difficulty is with simply doing that, I'm inclined to make a complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Note that it is my policy, if I am forced to complain to the ICO about non-compliance by a public authority, to always insist on a Decision Notice against the public authority. I insist on a DN even if the ICO's intervention persuaded the authority to release the information I have asked for. So please would you make sure that the policymakers at the Charity Commission are aware that their current approach risks a formal adverse finding from the Information Commissioner.

I look forward to your early reply.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Jackson

Ian Jackson left an annotation ()

This request is now the subject of a complaint to the Information Commissioner.

Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

Dear Mr Jackson

Thank you for your recent email.

I am sorry that I am not yet in a position to respond in full. The problem
that I have is that the information is no longer available on our website
or by directing you to the National Archive website. We do, though, hold
versions on our system.

While I appreciate that these were published previously, as they are no
longer available via any of the sources that we recognise then we must
consider providing a copy of the versions we hold under the terms of the
Freedom of Information Act (the Act). This means that we have to consider
the contents of each and every report (in total there are around 125 for
both years) in accordance with the specifics of the Act and, in
particular, whether there are elements within them that would be
considered personal information or breach legislation such as the Data
Protection Act.

This is, unfortunately, going to take us a little more time. I will
continue to keep you informed as we progress.

Regards

Liam Carroll

Complaints and FOI Manager  

 

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Dear Liam Carroll

Thanks for that update. As I'm sure you appreciate, I don't really consider that a suitable explanation.

It should be easy to rule out the notion of DPA implications when considering releasing information which was previously on your website (and which is only unavailable via the National Archive website through happenstance).

FYI, on Tuesday I made a complaint to the Information Commissioner about the delay to this request.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Jackson

Ian Jackson left an annotation ()

For reference, this complaint has Case Reference Number FS50538303 at the ICO.

Becky Bbear left an annotation ()

Ian - Under the DPA provisions 'personal data' must be held only for the purposes obtained and when no longer required for those purposes must be deleted.

In the context of your requests, at least some 'personal data' in the form of names or identifying information on the charity trustees at the time will be included in each report.

Understandable then that someone needs to read through all of the reports to identify such personal data and remove that which relates to anyone who is no longer a trustee of the charities concerned and therefore constitutes 'data no longer required' for the purpose of reporting on the charity and its trustees at the time.

The further back you go, the more likely that some or all of a charity's trustees will have changed. Not as simple as just sending the old .pdf files.

Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Jackson

2006 Inquiry Reports

I am now in a position to respond to your request for copies of all
Inquiry Reports that were published during 2006. I am sorry for the delay
in providing this information. As you are aware we have treated this as a
request for information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act
(The Act). The Act imposes a duty, set out in Section 1 (1) (a) to confirm
or deny whether we hold this information. In this instance I can confirm
that we do hold copies of the Inquiry Reports that we published in 2006.
Our records show that there were 47 reports.

This is slightly different to the information published on our website
which states that there were 46 reports. There is also a report into
Regents College & European Business School Trust Limited within the
records that we hold. I am unclear on the actual publication date or why
this was not included within the reports listed as published on our
website for 2006. However, as it is listed internally within the reports
published in 2006 I have included it for the purposes of this response.

I would like to apologise again for the delay in getting this information
to you. As I have mentioned while we held the information you requested,
because of the time scales involved, it was not available on either our
website or that of the National Archives. Therefore we had to consider
releasing it again under the provisions of FOI. This meant that we had to
assess whether there was information within the reports that, because of
its nature, may be considered exempt. This has unfortunately been
very time consuming.  We have, though, now assessed each  report and feel
that there is information within some of them that should be exempt as it
is either personal information or information that is considered
commercially sensitive.  I have attached a table which lists each of the
47 reports by name and the date of publication (where available). This
also shows whether the report has been released in full or whether we have
applied any exemptions. If so, the table will show which exemption has
been applied. 

Personal information

You will see that in some of the reports we have removed some personal
information, under Section 40 (2) of the Act, as the information
constitutes third party personal data for the purposes of the Data
Protection Act 1998 (DPA).  Section 40(2) provides that personal data
about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out
in section 40 (3) is satisfied, namely whether any of the data protection
principles would be contravened by the disclosure.  Under the Act,
disclosure of this information would breach the fair processing principle
contained in the DPA where it would be unfair to that person and/or is
confidential.

Commercial Interests

We have also removed details of certain organisations within some of the
reports under section 43 (2) of the Freedom of Information Act, on the
basis that disclosure would be likely to prejudice their commercial
interests.  This is a qualified exemption and it is therefore subject to
the public interest test. 

We understand that there is public interest in the disclosure of certain
commercial information in order to ensure that there is transparency,
particularly in the accountability of public funds and that public money
is being used effectively.  On the other hand disclosing details may
damage an organisations business reputation and the confidence that others
may have in it. In this instance we feel that to release details of the
organisations involved may be likely to prejudice the commercial interests
of these organisations.  Therefore, on balance, we consider that the
public interest is served in not releasing the information.

Please find attached the table I have mentioned. Given the amount of
information I will now send 5 separate emails containing the reports in
the same order as specified in the table.  We will be responding to your
request for 2005 Inquiry Reports shortly.

I hope that this is sufficient for your needs. If I have misunderstood
your request in any way please let me know. If you think our response is
incorrect you can ask for it to be reviewed.   Such requests should be
submitted within three months of the date of our response and should be
addressed to the Charity Commission at PO Box 1227, Liverpool, L69 3UG

(email: [1][email address].)

More information about our Freedom of Information Act review service can
be found on the following link on our website:  

[2]http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/medi....

If, after this, you remain unhappy with the decision, you may apply
directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision.  Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our review
procedure.  The ICO  can be contacted at the Information Commissioner’s
Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF (email:
[3][email address].)

Yours sincerely

Liam Carroll

Complaints and FOI Manager.

 

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Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

11 Attachments

Dear Mr Jackson

Please find copies of the first set of reports as discussed.

 
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Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

10 Attachments

 

Dear Mr Jackson

Please find email 2/5.

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Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

10 Attachments

Dear Mr Jackson - email 3/5
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Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

10 Attachments

Dear Mr Jackson

Email 4/5

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Carroll, Liam, Charity Commission for England and Wales

7 Attachments

 

Dear Mr Jackson.

The 5th and final email re the Inquiry Reports for 2006.

Regards

Liam Carroll - Complaints and FOI Manager

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