Avon Flora Group / Project

The request was partially successful.

Dear Bristol City Council,

Please could you release, in electronic form via this WhatDoTheyKnow request, copies of the minutes of all meetings of the Avon Flora Group (previously known as the Avon Flora Project) which is run by Bristol City Council. Should this request exceed the 18-hour limit, please start from the most recent meetings and work backwards chronologically until the limit is reached.

Yours faithfully,

Susan Davis

Freedom of Information, Bristol City Council

Thank you for your request for information. You should expect to receive a response within the 20 working day limit.

______________________________________________________________________
Council services online: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/service

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Dear Bristol City Council,

I believe that a response to this request is now overdue. Could you tell me when I can expect to hear from you.

Thanks

Susan Davis

Dear Bristol City Council,

I would be grateful for a response to my email asking for an update on progress with my request for information.

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

Chris Harper, Bristol City Council

Dear Ms Davis. Thank you for your FOI request and my apologies that I
did not respond to you by the deadline date.

I have been in contact with a colleague, Tim Corner, of our Museums
service, and he has advised that the Avon Floral Group comprised a
number of interested amateurs with a keen interest in plants. The City
Council facilitated the meetings of the Group and acted as publisher for
them but their meetings, by their very nature, were not formally
minuted, although notes may have been made depending on the subject
matter under discussion.

That Group last met in 1999 but some documentation in relation to that
Group is still held. Tim has requested that if you wish to inspect those
documents that you contact him to arrange an appointment.His e-mail
address is [email address]

This response should answer your request in full, however if you are
not satisfied with this response or wish to lodge an appeal against any
exemptions that may have been applied, you can do so by writing to the
Data Protection Officer at Bristol City Council Legal Services, The
Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS99 7PH or [Bristol City Council request email].
Details of the complaints procedure can be found at
http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/complaints.

If, after you have exhausted the council’s complaints procedure, you
are still not satisfied with the response you have received you have the
right to complain to the Information Commissioner, details of your right
to complain can be found at http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

Copyright notice
The provision of information by Bristol City Council under this scheme
does not imply a right to reproduce or commercially exploit such
information without the Council's express prior written permission.
Reproduction or commercial exploitation of materials supplied under
this scheme without the express permission of Bristol City Council may
be an infringement of copyright.
The Council is unable to grant permission to reproduce or re-use any
material accessed through this scheme that is the property of third
parties. Permission to reproduce or re-use such material must be
obtained from the copyright holders.

Regards

Chris Harper
Central Support Manager
Management Suite
Brunel House
St George's Rd
Bristol
BS1 5UY

Tel:0117 922 3382
E-mail: [email address]

______________________________________________________________________
Council services online: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/service

Keep up to date with the latest council news and sign up to our monthly email newsletter: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ournews

Have your say on consultations and view our webcasts: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/consult

Dear Chris,

Thank you for your reply. I would be interested in copies of the documentation you refer to in your reply. Please could you provide this in electronic form via this WhatDoTheyKnow request.

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

Chris Harper, Bristol City Council

I am out of the office until Mon 17th Sept

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Dear Chris,

Thank you for your reply. I would be interested in copies of the
documentation you refer to in your reply. Please could you provide
this in electronic form via this WhatDoTheyKnow request.

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

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Dear Chris,

One piece of information in your last reply puzzled me: you said that the group last met in 1999. However they are still listed as a group on the website of the city council's environmental records centre, and I have been able to confirm, by doing a quick Google search, that the group continued to produce publications well into this century. As an example, see
http://www.brerc.eclipse.co.uk/files/AFG...

On the face of it, this appears to contradict the statement that the group last met in 1999, unless they continue(d) to operate without actually meeting, which seems unusual. I'm interested to know what the status of the group was in 2007 when the publication linked above was produced and also its current status. Could you shed any light on this please?

Thanks,

Susan Davis

Chris Harper, Bristol City Council

Dear Ms Davis. I have referred your questions to my colleague in the Museums service and will forward you his comments as soon as I have them. I have also forwarded him your request for any existing documentation concerning the Group to be made available in electronic form.

Regards

Chris Harper
Central Support Manager
Management Suite
Brunel House
St George's Rd
Bristol
BS1 5UY

Tel:0117 922 3382
E-mail: [email address]

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Chris Harper, Bristol City Council

Dear Ms Davis. In response to the points which you raised about the above group, my colleague, Tim Corner, of our Museums Service has commented as follows:

The Avon Flora project was set up many years ago to produce the Flora of the Bristol Region. The 'group' was supported by BRERC who covered the costs of the production, handled the data and provided office space for meetings.

The Book was published in 1999/2000 and the last year or two prior to publication a small group (the authors) met regularly one evening a week to go through he data and produce the species accounts. I have not come across any formal, nor informal minutes of those meetings. I have also not seen any other minutes although I have not had a need to look for any.

The authors and group were entirely voluntary and I am not aware that BRERC staff charged for their time to attend evening meetings.

After the book was published the committee (authors) meet to discuss whether to continue as a group or disband. This was an informal meeting and I am not aware that any notes or minutes were taken. The consensus was that they wished the group to continue and be renamed the Avon Flora Group to encourage continued recording of plants. However they were not minded to play active roles in the Group. At about the same time they were invited to attend an informal meeting of various other recording group committees to discuss common issues relating to engaging with recorders. Again the Group chose to not have further active engagement in the Group.

Following this BRERC chose to maintain production of a Flora Newsletter and page on our website to try and encourage others to take an active role in the Group, to enable the Group to function and to encourage flora recorders. The newsletters subsequently produced were produced by BRERC volunteers and staff who had their own interest in flora recording.

This course of action is similar to that by BRERC regarding the Hoverfly Group. This Group had not met since at least 1998 (before my time). I have not seen any meeting notes of that very small group. BRERC continued to produce a Hoverfly Group newsletter and web page without any engagement from others until we suggested in a newsletter that we wished to see a guide produced on hoverflies that could be seen in our area. A consequence was the production of the Introduction to the Hoverflies of the Bristol Region in 2011 with the assistance of a small number of expert recorders in their voluntary capacity. There were no formal meetings of the Group and no minutes taken.

We have no electronic copies of correspondence otr meeting notes of the Avon Flora Group or Avon Flora Project. We have a filing cabinet of Group papers but whether there are papers of interest to the enquirer only they would know. I am happy for someone to arrange to come in and go through the cabinet of papers. It would be very time consuming for BRERC to photocopy each paper on the off-chance it will be of value to the enquirer and BRERC does not have the capacity to do this without affecting our ability to conduct our routine business and meet our obligations to our Partners, including providing data to them to fulfil their statutory duty. BRERC receive only approximately 60% core funds to cover our core costs and only have 2.5 permanent staff.

The Group were a group of volunteers engaging in activities they wished for their common purpose of producing the books. I am not convinced they should be treated as a public body and that the Freedom of Information Act was not intended to apply to such a group.

It will potentially harm BRERC's business if we had to photocopy and send off a cabinet of various papers that BRERC are not obliged to maintain or hold.

I am happy to accommodate any help we can to provide the information requested and extend an invitation to the enquirer to contact BRERC directly to facilitate that.

Regards

Chris Harper
Central Support Manager
Management Suite
Brunel House
St George's Rd
Bristol
BS1 5UY

Tel:0117 922 3382
E-mail: [email address]

______________________________________________________________________
Council services online: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/service

Keep up to date with the latest council news and sign up to our monthly email newsletter: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/ournews

Have your say on consultations and view our webcasts: http://www.bristol.gov.uk/consult

Dear Chris,

Thank you for this informative reply. To clarify one point, which I'm sure you appreciate but your colleague doesn't appear to: my request is to the City Council, relating to information it holds, not a request to the AFG itself. That the group had voluntary status does not mean that the City Council is exempt from releasing information it holds relating to the group, just as it would not be exempt from releasing any information about any other voluntary group, as I'm sure you realise.

Am I correct in thinking that it is good practice (or possibly even an obligation under the Act) for public bodies to help enquirers refine their requests to a more manageable size where the original request is too large to be accommodated? If so, could you suggest how that could be done? For example if there is an index of the information held, could this be made available to assist with narrowing down the request. Alternatively, is the information held in date order? If so, I would be interested in seeing just the most recent information within the 18-hour limit. Perhaps certain categories of information of peripheral interest are filed together away from core information, and excluding those categories would result in a remaining information of a manageable size to handle under an FOI request? Maybe you or your colleague could think of other ways in which I could refine my request? In response to a request I made to another public body in relation to motorway proposals in the West Midlands, although the original information requested would have been too large a request, the staff member dealing with the request very helpfully gave me some pointers as to the information which they thought could have been of most relevance, which I appreciated as they could just as easily have said that they had no idea what information was likely to be of interest and refused the request. Browsing the information in the City Council's filing cabinet to come up with some equivalent suggestions would probably only take less than an hour of someone's time, I would imagine?

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

Chris Harper, Bristol City Council

Dear Ms Davis. I know that this is a very small team already under considerable pressure so could I ask you to provide further detail as to what you are looking for in "minutes" which as my colleague has pointed out do go back quite a number of years.

Thanks

Regards

Chris Harper
Central Support Manager
Management Suite
Brunel House
St George's Rd
Bristol
BS1 5UY

Tel:0117 922 3382
E-mail: [email address]

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Dear Chris,

Yes, of course, I'm happy to. I am interested in gaining an insight into the way in which botanical recording was co-ordinated within the Bristol region in the AFG era, what governance mechanisms were in place, and what major decisions (or categories of decision) were made by the AFG. Since learning that AFG is no longer extant, I am also interested in how these aspects are dealt with now, although I appreciate that AFG documentation may not be able to tell me that. I hope this is helpful: if you'd like more clarification, please let me know.

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

Chris Harper, Bristol City Council

Dear Ms Davis. In response to the points which you clarified, my
colleague in the Museums Service has advised as detailed below, although
I would point out that his knowledge of the Group is second hand as it
operated prior to his arrival at BRERC.

There is a chapter called history of the Avon Flora Project in the
'Flora of the Bristol Region' which is still on sale from BRERC for £10.
This has some explanation regarding the decisions made and those
involved and I am not sure how much more information BRERC can easily
provide.

As I understand it governance consisted of a small voluntary committee
(authors) of flora experts along with the previous manager of BRERC
(also a flora expert). At least two of the committee are also
vice-county recorders of the Botanical Society of the British Isles
(BSBI). Avon covers part of two vice counties.

This committee determined the scope of the planned book, how to engage
recorders and targeting areas of Avon for increased recording effort.
Additional determinations would have included decisions on agreed
nomenclature, style of maps used, agreeing which print company to use,
charge for the book and number of print run and enabling the data to be
managed by BRERC in its role as a local Environmental Records Centre
(LRC). At the time BRERC internal governance was through a Joint
Advisory Committee and a Steering Group of Partner organisations. BRERC
is hosted and line managed by Bristol City Council through the Museum
Service
.
Requests to the recording community will have been made either through
the BRERC and/or Flora newsletters and possibly directly to those whose
contact details are maintained at BRERC (many recorders request we hold
contact details and provide guidance on what and where to record).
Further promotion and support may have been through identification
workshop and field walk events.

I am not sure what is meant by major decisions or categories of
decisions.

Regarding what mechanisms are in place now the Group is not extant -
recording by the public and professionals continue and they continue to
submit that data to BRERC. BRERC continue to support existing and
potential recording by producing occasional newsletters and other
promotional material, providing workshops, talks and events. BRERC is
line managed through Bristol City Council on behalf of the BRERC
Partnership of 3 unitary authorities, Natural England and Avon Wildlife
Trust. We have a Management Board of these partner organisations that
oversee the operations of BRERC.

Currently BRERC do not co-ordinate botanical recording in our area, we
merely encourage and support it. We receive and manage such records and
make them available to the rest of the world in accordance to national
and international standards. BRERC is the first LRC to have made all
species records (1.5 million) available via the National Biodiversity
Network (NBN) Gateway website and through the NBN to the Global
Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). This is in addition to making
the records available via the BRERC Web Portal (interactive map) and
directly to partners and also directly to enquirers on demand.

This response should answer your request in full, however if you are
not satisfied with this response or wish to lodge an appeal against any
exemptions that may have been applied, you can do so by writing to the
Data Protection Officer at Bristol City Council Legal Services, The
Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS99 7PH or [Bristol City Council request email].
Details of the complaints procedure can be found at
http://www.bristol-city.gov.uk/complaints.

If, after you have exhausted the council’s complaints procedure, you
are still not satisfied with the response you have received you have the
right to complain to the Information Commissioner, details of your right
to complain can be found at http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

Copyright notice
The provision of information by Bristol City Council under this scheme
does not imply a right to reproduce or commercially exploit such
information without the Council's express prior written permission.
Reproduction or commercial exploitation of materials supplied under
this scheme without the express permission of Bristol City Council may
be an infringement of copyright.
The Council is unable to grant permission to reproduce or re-use any
material accessed through this scheme that is the property of third
parties. Permission to reproduce or re-use such material must be
obtained from the copyright holders.

Regards

Chris Harper
Central Support Manager
Management Suite
Brunel House
St George's Rd
Bristol
BS1 5UY

Tel:0117 922 3382
E-mail: [email address]

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