Bullying in Shropshire Council

Yabootoyou made this Freedom of Information request to Shropshire Council

This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

Waiting for an internal review by Shropshire Council of their handling of this request.

Dear Shropshire Council,

Following a realization that bullying in Cheshire East is about six times higher than in Cheshire West and Chester and having seen accusations of a culture of bullying in the former on the internet, combined with my own experiences of bullying in Cheshire County Council's Public Rights of Way unit and my own efforts to withstand that bullying (display of ID card of ex-employee in manager's office with picture of cow replacing her ID photo ([name removed]) or "anyone thinking of complaining yaboo to you" by [name removed] once complaints of bullying had been made) and the evidence of bullies in Employment Tribunal (which chopped and changed), this FOI request is being made to provide a comparison with Cheshire East to prove statistically in relation with other councils. It is also being made to make the public at large and in each authority aware of which councils are the worst offenders or the better examples. All councils have very similar anti-bullying / dignity at work policies, to which, from the results already in, they seem to stick to varying degrees. For example, the first non-Cheshire authority to reply, Kent County Council, shows 60 complaints against Cheshire East's 62, with both having 18 upheld in favour of the complainant. However, Kent's population is around 5 times greater than Cheshire East's. Also, Cheshire East replied to this FOI Act request 8 days late with no communication between the deadline and the 8 days after, whereas Kent replied 11 days after the request was made.

1) How many employees of your authority have
made an
official complaint of harassment and bullying at work since the 1st April 2009?

2) How many of these complaints were upheld in favour of the
complainant?

3) How many of those which were not upheld in favour of the
complainant went on to Appeal?

4) How many of those that went to Appeal were found to favour the
complainant?

5) How many complaints went on to an Employment Tribunal?

6) How many of these were found to uphold the complaint?

7) Out of how many of those allegations (the number given to question 1) did the complainant of
bullying claim that the bullies were telling lies?

8) How many staff does your authority have and what is the current population within your authority's area?

Yours faithfully

Mr Lewis
yabootoyou

FOI, Shropshire Council

Dear Mr Lewis

 

Thank you for your request for information received on 27/10/2015.  We are
currently processing your request in accordance with the relevant
legislation.

 

You have requested details regarding complaints made by staff about
bullying at work, as outlined in the letter of request.

 

(Please note this may be a summary of your request and full details, as
outlined in the request, will be sent to the team providing the response.)

 

If you feel the information is inaccurate or requires amendment, please
notify us as soon as possible using the contact details provided below. 

 

Yours sincerely

 

Information Governance Team

Shropshire Council

Shirehall

Abbey Foregate

SHREWSBURY

SY2 6ND

 

Tel:                  01743 252179 / 252774 / 252747

Email:             [Shropshire Council request email]

Web:               www.shropshire.gov.uk/foi.nsf

 

 

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Dear Shropshire Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Shropshire Council's handling of my FOI request 'Bullying in Shropshire Council'.

Please note that since my request and your reply of the 29th October 2015 from your Information Governance Team, I have not had a reply to my FOI request.

You are therefore out of time and I wish to challenge you on this.

If you could see your way to providing the information in my FOI
request ASAP I would be grateful, as I am ready to publish the
table of results, send it to the press and put it on the internet
and I wish to provide the average figures for all councils as well
as the figures for individual councils. This requires your
figures.

You are now aware that your late reply is holding this up.
Providing this would not take away the fact that you are already
late and this complaint.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/b...

Yours faithfully,

Mr Lewis
Yabootoyou

FOI, Shropshire Council

 

Dear Mr Lewis

Thank you for your email dated 22 February 2016. We are sorry that you
have not received a response to your request. We will look into this and
provide a response as soon as we are able.

 

We will also arrange for an internal review of your information request to
be carried out. 

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

 

Information Governance Team

Shropshire Council

Shirehall

Abbey Foregate

SHREWSBURY

SY2 6ND

 

Tel:                  01743 252179 / 252774 / 252747 

Email:             [Shropshire Council request email]

Web:               www.shropshire.gov.uk/foi.nsf

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FOI, Shropshire Council

1 Attachment

 

Dear Mr Lewis 

 

Further to your request for information, please find our
response attached. We are very sorry for the delay in responding.

 

You had requested an Internal Review of your request because the
information had not been supplied. We would be grateful if you could
confirm if this is still required.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Information Governance Team

Shropshire Council

Shirehall

Abbey Foregate

SHREWSBURY

SY2 6ND

 

Tel:                  01743252179 / 252774 / 252747 

Email:             [Shropshire Council request email]

Web:               www.shropshire.gov.uk/foi.nsf

 

 

 

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Dear FOI,

I do wish to go to review as I feel you could have, at the stage of providing the information, provided a reason for the delay. The only way of me getting an explanation, which I feel is fully merited and I personally would have openly provided it at the time of apologizing, is to go to review.

On a positive note for you, I will point out that you have a very low level of bullying compared with other councils and a high rate of belief in the complainant, when compared with other councils, for example your neighbours in Cheshire, which is down there with the worst. Shame you will not be on the graph as your figures only go back to 2010 and I am putting on the graph those with full responses back to 2009. You would probably have been the best, beating Somerset (where I moved from to go to Cheshire). Regretfully. But that's of no interest to you, I'm sure.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Lewis

Yabootoyou

Information.Request, Shropshire Council

Dear Mr Lewis

I am responding to your email dated 25 March 2016 regarding the delay in the response to your FOI request (Bullying in Shropshire Council (CAS-888814-X3G1T7 - Staff complaints about bullying at work)).

We receive a large number of FOI requests each month and the HR Team has been extremely busy over the last 6 months with supporting the organisation through major restructures in order for the council to make substantial savings. Your request was logged but unfortunately it was not followed up and actioned until we received notification that this had not been responded to. We have since improved our logging process and now have measures in place to avoid requests being missed in future.

I sincerely apologise for the delay in responding to your request.

Regards
HR Manager

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Yabootoyou left an annotation ()

This HR response may provide the reasons but doesn't take away the review already submitted. I will wait 20 working days and if no review, then ICO challenge.

Dear Information.Request,

I would like to add the following question to my request.

Q9) Out of the number in the response to question 1, how many of
the complainants said that they had been called "a loner"?

Yours sincerely,

Mr Lewis

Yabootoyou

Heather Jones, Shropshire Council

Dear Mr Lewis

Thank you for your email. We will make enquiries with regard to this additional question and respond as soon as we are able.

Yours sincerely

Information Governance Team
Shropshire Council
Shirehall
Abbey Foregate
SHREWSBURY
SY2 6ND

Telephone: 01743 252179
Email: [Shropshire Council request email]

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