Brent Staff Achievement Award winners 2014

The request is waiting for clarification. If you are B.Benazi, please sign in to send a follow up message.

Dear Brent Borough Council,

I note that you refused the following requests as you stated it was personal information:

1. The number of nominations/votes received by individual Brent
Staff Achievement Award winners 2014
2. The number of nominations/votes received for Rosemarie Clarke
for Brent Staff Achievement Awards 2014.

However: Brent Staff Achievement Awards 2014 are a public process paid for by taxpayers. Within the terms and conditions of the awards are for the winner of the awards to be publicised. I would therefore like you to review if this is personal information or not.

If you still think its personal information please release anonymised:

The number of people nomiated for the Brent Staff Achievement Awards 2014
and the number of votes that each person achieved.

Please also release the winner of these tax payer funded awards.

Yours faithfully,

B.Benazi

Cara Davani,

Information request
Our reference: 2722396

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Dear Mr. Benazi
 
Thank you for your information request. We will forward it to the
relevant department who will contact you shortly.
 
Brent Council
Brent Civic Centre
Engineers Way
Wembley HA9 0FJ
[email address]
 
NOTE: Please do not edit the subject line when replying to this email.

Freedom of Information, Brent Borough Council

Dear Mr Benazi,

Thank you for your email.

As your review request is worded in very similar fashion to another request received under a different name, we require evidence of your identity in order to proceed with your request. As you may be aware, the Information Commissioner has ruled that requests cannot be made pseudonymously and Section 8 of the FoIA requires that requestors use their real name or that under which they are usually known.

Please could you provide proof of identification, either electronically to [Brent Borough Council request email], or by post to:

Freedom of Information Team
4th Floor
Brent Civic Centre
Wembley
London
HA9 0FJ

Acceptable proof of identity includes:
- Passport
- Driving Licence
- Birth Certificate
- Utility Bill
- Bank Statement
- Council Tax bill/statement

Scans and copies are acceptable, there is no need to send original documents.

Once these are received the Council will continue with your Internal Review. If we do not receive this information within 20 working days (by the 24th February 2015) I will assume that you are unwilling or unable to provide such documentation and I will close this case.

I appreciate that this may cause inconvenience and apologise for any caused, however I am required to protect public funds and our staff time by ensuring that all FoI requests that we process are valid requests in accordance with FoIA. We look forward to receiving your documentation and proceeding with your requests in due course.

James Scott

Principal FoI Officer
Assistant Chief Executive’s Service
London Borough of Brent

020 8937 1109

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Dear James,
This is a matter of local interest and I was following the request made by another person on whatdotheyknow. The subject matter is similar hence the reason for the request.You have no legal basis to ID me for making a yes similar request but with different content. I would like to see your policy and proceedure with regard to this and you can consider that a FOI request or furnish me with the initial information.

If this is a - No - please state as such and at that point I will request an internal review of your decision. If that is refused also - I will take this to the information commisioner as there appears to be obstruction.

Yours sincerely,

B.Benazi

Freedom of Information, Brent Borough Council

Dear Mr Benazi,

Thank you for your email.

The Information Commissioner's detailed guidance on pseudonymous requests can be found at:

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.u...

You will see that the Council is in fact permitted to refuse the request altogether if they believe it to be pseudonymous. However, I do not wish to refuse what may be a legitimate request with a genuine public interest, hence I am requesting identification in order to continue with it, which you will note from the guidance is also permitted. You may of course appeal to the ICO, but you will note that the ICO will also attempt to verify your identity.

Your request for a third-party review of Mr Tahir's request (which is not permitted under FoI) was followed 20 minutes later by a very similarly worded review request under the name of Mr Tahir. Both were received via a third-party website which prevented the use of IP Address checks to verify whether they were sent from different locations. In my view that raises the reasonable possibility that one of both of these names may be pseudonymous and I am quite prepared to present that evidence to the ICO if that is needed. However, I would prefer to process this request as I understand the public interest involved as you have pointed out. Therefore I am requesting identification rather than refusing the request outright.

In accordance with the data protection principles I will ensure that any copies of any identification you send are destroyed and that no officer other than myself will see them. If you do not wish to send them to the FoI inbox you can send them to my own Brent email address at [email address].

We are requesting identification from you, in strictest confidence, in order to verify that a pseudonym has not been used in this instance. In the past, pseudonymous FoI requests have been used in an attempt to harass staff and disrupt the Council's ability to function, and we wish to ensure that we only respond to valid requests for information to safeguard public funds and protect our staff.

Regards,

James Scott

Principal FoI Officer
Assistant Chief Executive’s Service
London Borough of Brent

020 8937 1109

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