Arnhem Twinning
Dear Croydon Borough Council,
Please provide a copy of the Arnhem-Croydon Twinning Agreement
Please also provide the terms and reference agenda and minutes of the Croydon-Arnhem Working Group
Yours faithfully,
R
Information Team Croydon
Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House
7th Floor, Zone B
Croydon
CR0 1EA
Contact: Information Team
[Croydon Borough Council request email]
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you have a processing request, please ensure you quote that reference in
your emails to us.
DEAR R Head
Freedom of information request - FOI/7083
Subject: Arnhem Twinning
Your request is being considered and you will receive a response within
the statutory timescale of 20 working days, subject to the application of
any exemptions. Where consideration is being given to exemptions the 20
working day timescale may be extended to a period considered reasonable
depending on the nature and circumstances of your request. In such cases
you will be notified and, where possible, a revised time-scale will be
indicated. In all cases we shall attempt to deal with your request at the
earliest opportunity.
If we are unable to provide you with the information requested we will
notify you of this together with the reason(s) why, and details of how you
may appeal.
Please note that the directorate team may contact you for further
information where we believe that the request is not significantly clear
for us to respond fully.
Kind Regard
Information Management Team
Croydon Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
7th Floor, Zone B
Bernard Weatherill House
8 Mint Walk
Croydon CR0 1EA
Information Team Croydon
Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House
7th Floor, Zone B
Croydon
CR0 1EA
Contact: Information Team
[Croydon Borough Council request email]
Dear R Head
Request FOI/7083
Further to your request received on 20/02/2023, I confirm that the Council
has now considered your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000. For ease of reference, I will now address each of your questions in
turn.
Please provide a copy of the Arnhem-Croydon Twinning Agreement
Attached
Please also provide the terms and reference agenda and minutes of the
Croydon-Arnhem Working Group
The Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004
specify an “appropriate limit” for the amount of time the council needs to
spend undertaking that search. If the council estimates that the time to
taken to locate, retrieve and extract the information requested will
exceed the appropriate limit, then under Section 12 of the Act, it is not
obliged to carry comply with that request.
The appropriate limit currently specified by the Regulations for local
authorities is £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person
spending two and a half working days in locating, retrieving and
extracting the information from where it is stored.
In order to provide the information you have requested, the council would
need to undertake a specific piece of work to review each case in order to
locate, retrieve and extract information.
The service have advised that there are boxes of hand-written minutes and
associated paperwork in storage, and whilst the information may be
held held, it would take a significant amount of time to go through and
find, copy/scan all the documents. The cumulative time it would take
Council officers to do has been estimated to take way over 18 hours of
officer time to action and thus this would exceed the “appropriate
limit”. Therefore, we are unable to disclose the information you are
seeking as it would take our officers in excess of 18 hours to provide.
The Council publishes Access to Information requests and responses on its
online Disclosure Log. (Any request included within this log will be
anonymised appropriately)
To view the Council’s Disclosure Log, please visit our website available
here:
[1]The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act | Croydon Council
(disclosure-log.co.uk)
If you are dissatisfied with the way the Council has handled your request
under the Freedom of Information Act, you may ask for an internal review.
This should be submitted to us within 40 working days of this response.
You can do this by outlining the details of your complaint by:
Email: [2][Croydon Borough Council request email]
Writing: Information Team
London Borough of Croydon
Bernard Weatherill House
Floor 7 - Zone B
8 Mint Walk
Croydon, CR0 1EA
Any requests received after the 40 working day time limit will be
considered only at the discretion of the council.
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,
Information Team
Croydon Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House,
Mint Walk,
Croydon,
CR0 1EA
[3][Croydon Borough Council request email]
[4][email address]
References
Visible links
1. https://croydon.disclosure-log.co.uk/
2. mailto:[Croydon Borough Council request email]
3. mailto:[Croydon Borough Council request email]
4. mailto:[email address]
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 'Arnhem Twinning'.
Thank you for providing some of the information. However, under the FOI Act you are obliged to help steer my request to bring it within the limit. May I therefore request that the work be undertaken covering the most recent meetings until the limit is reached.
If the Council published minutes and agendas for this Committee in line with all other Committees this would not need to be carried out and it appears this is a breach of Council policy by not digitising the records here.
[ GIVE DETAILS ABOUT YOUR COMPLAINT HERE ]
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...
Yours faithfully,
R Head
Information Team Croydon
Digital Services
Assistant Chief Executive Directorate
Bernard Wetherill House
7th Floor, Zone B
Croydon
CR0 1EA
Contact: Information Team
[Croydon Borough Council request email]
Dear R Head
Request FOI/7083
Freedom of Information Request
We write to you in response to your e-mail dated 20/3/23, in which you
have asked for an Internal Review of the Council response to your request
for information in relation to the Arnhem-Croydon Twinning Agreement.
We contacted the service that responded to your original request and asked
for a further search to be carried out which they have done of our
archives. The service have confirmed that a box was found and these
documents have been scanned in and can be found attached. They have also
confirmed that there are no electronic records and these are all the
documents found.
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
Croydon Council
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