Care orders

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treat this automatic email reply as confirmation that we have received
your enquiry and will respond to you accordingly.

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be dealt with online at [1]www.trafford.gov.uk. The council's website
enables many forms to be completed and payments to be made online, as well
as providing comprehensive information.
Kind regards
Information Governance Team
Trafford Council

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Your enquiry has been given the reference number 12224. Please quote this in all future correspondence with regard to this enquiry.

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Thank you
Trafford Council

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Dear Sheila

Many thanks for your email.

The Council requests further clarification on your FOI request:

What data regarding those care orders are you interested in?

Your request has been placed on hold and the clock will restart as soon as we have received the list of questions.

Kind regards,

Jo Clarke
Freedom for Information Support Officer
Integrated Customer Engagement Team (ICE)

Trafford Council
Trafford Town Hall
Talbot Road
Stretford
M32 0TH

( 0161 912 1941
Fax: 0161 912 1289

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Morning Sheila

Many thanks for your response to our question for clarification on your request, I will share with the service & come back to you with a response within the allotted time scale.

Have a good day &

Kind regards,

Jo Clarke
Freedom for Information Support Officer
Integrated Customer Engagement Team (ICE)

Trafford Council
Trafford Town Hall
Talbot Road
Stretford
M32 0TH

( 0161 912 1941
Fax: 0161 912 1289

Please think of the environment before printing this email. Thank you.

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Many thanks Sheila I will forward onto the relevant team to update them.

Kind regards,

Jo Clarke
Freedom for Information Support Officer
Integrated Customer Engagement Team (ICE)

Trafford Council
Trafford Town Hall
Talbot Road
Stretford
M32 0TH

( 0161 912 1941
Fax: 0161 912 1289

Please think of the environment before printing this email. Thank you.

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Dear Sheila Gibb

Thank you for your email of the 09/09/22 where you requested information about Care Orders

Notice of Refusal Issued under Section 12, Freedom of Information Act, (2000).

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, Trafford Council has a duty to supply any information on request, unless there is an exemption. This section relieves a public authority from the obligation to comply with a request for information under Section 1(1) of the Act where the estimated time required to locate, review and extract the information exceeds a certain threshold set out in Regulations. The Regulations set out the cost limit for Government departments and for other public authorities. For local government, Regulation 3 states that the cost limit is £450 and Regulation 4(4) states that the prescribed hourly rate is £25 which equates to 18 officer hours.

Please be advised that to supply the information that you have requested, it is estimated to exceed the statutory limit of 18 hours. In this case it is estimated that the time taken would be in excess of the statutory 18 hour time limit due to the granularity of detail requested. The information is not available in an easily reportable format and therefore would require manual interrogation of the records. A manual trawl of over 376 files x five minutes per file would amount to over 31 hours.

This request is therefore refused under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

In order to assist with your request, we would ask whether you are able to refine the initial request in order that it can be dealt with under the appropriate limit.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of receipt of the response to your original letter and should be addressed to: Information Governance Manager, Trafford Council, Town Hall, Talbot Road StretfordM33 0TH or via email to [Trafford Council request email]

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future communications.

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

The supply of information in response to a freedom of information request does not confer an automatic right to re-use the information. Under UK copyright law you can use any information supplied for the purposes of private study and non-commercial research without requiring permission. Similarly, information supplied can also be re-used for the purposes of news reporting. An exception to this is photographs.
For other forms of re-use, for example publishing the information, you would need the permission of the organisation or person who owns the copyright. In the case of information produced by government departments and agencies you can re-use the information under the Open Government Licence. For information about this please see http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/o...
If, however, the copyright is identified as belonging to somebody else, you will need to apply for permission. For information about how to obtain permission from a third party, please go to Intellectual Property Office’s website at www.ipo.gov.uk

Yours sincerely,

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Dear Ms Gibb,

Thank you for your email below regarding our response to your FOI,
reference 12224.

Your request has now been passed for internal review. We aim to complete
all internal reviews within 20 working days. We will notify you of the
outcome of the review and, where appropriate, provide the requested
information.

If you require any further information in the meantime, please do not
hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards

Information Governance

Email: [1][Trafford Council request email]

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Dear Ms Gibb,

Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) – Outcome of Internal Review

Thank you for your email dated 4^th October 2022 in which you raised
queries around the handling of your FOI request and also raised the
following questions:

I am writing to request an internal review of Trafford Metropolitan
Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Care orders'.

I find it odd you don't hold simple data about children care orders that
is easily accessible for publication.

Other boroughs have provided this so I expect the same of all boroughs.

This request is crucial for the public to understand how Trafford Council
deals with children care orders by type by year.

Scope of the Internal Review Process

The purpose of an Internal Review is to assess how your Freedom of
Information (FOI) request was handled in the first instance and to
determine whether the original decision given to you was correct. All
applicants are informed of their right to request a review, under this
process, when they are sent a response to a request for information. This
is an independent review: I was not involved in the original decision.

Initial Freedom of Information Request Received on 9^th September 2022

Your initial request is attached in full for reference, but in summary you
requested;

The data for all care orders from 2015 to date for; 1. Emergency Interim
Orders 2. Interim care orders 3. Care orders 4. Deprivation of Liberty
orders 5. Supervision orders 6. Any other orders under public law and for
each type to provide the legal firm appointed.

Your request was received by our team on the 9^th September 2022, and your
request was acknowledged on the 12^th September 2022.

On the 12^th September 2022, the information was also requested from the
service we thought was the appropriate service to assist with the enquiry,
and subsequently we were advised on the same day to seek further
clarification under Section 1(3) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The clock was then stopped and progressed again on 26^th September 2022
after receiving your response and sent back to the service that same day.

On the 3^rd October 2022 we received a response from the allocated service
to advise that the information requested is not available in an easily
reportable format and therefore would require manual interrogation of the
records. A manual trawl of over 376 files x five minutes per file would
amount to over 31 hours exceeding the statutory limit of 18 hours.

On the 4^th October 2022 our response was issued to you, notifying you of
the decision of refusal under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act
2000.

Summary of the Council’s Response to Freedom of Information Request 12224

Our final response was issued to you on 4^th October 2022, with a Notice
of Refusal Issued under Section 12 (1), Freedom of Information Act,
(2000). You were advised of the reason for this and that to supply the
information requested, it is estimated to exceed the appropriate limit,
defined by the Freedom of Information Act (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
2004.

It was suggested that In order to assist with your request, we would ask
whether you were able to refine the initial request in order for it to be
dealt with under the appropriate limit.

Review

I will now respond to each of the further queries that you raised on 4^th
October 2022 in full below:

I find it odd you don't hold simple data about children care orders that
is easily accessible for publication.

The information is not available in an easily reportable format by our
Legal team and therefore would require manual interrogation of the over
376 files. We believe that the cost and time involved in collating the
information in order to respond to your request would exceed the threshold
of £450 as defined by the Freedom of Information Act (Appropriate Limit
and Fees) 2004.

For local government, Regulation 3 states that the cost limit is £450 and
Regulation 4(4) states that the prescribed hourly rate is £25 which
equates to 18 officer hours. A manual trawl of over 376 files x five
minutes per file would amount to over 31 officer hours at a cost of over
£775.

As a result, we would uphold our initial decision in refusing your request
under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please refer to
the refusal notice attached.

For Deprivation of Liberty orders and Supervision orders alone, Children’s
Services would need to carry out key word searches on the 11,225 open
referrals from the last 7 years and then read through all matches to
ensure they actually relate to the FOI request. We believe that the cost
and time involved in collating the information in order to respond to your
request would exceed the threshold of £450 as defined by the Freedom of
Information Act (Appropriate Limit and Fees) 2004.

For local government, Regulation 3 states that the cost limit is £450 and
Regulation 4(4) states that the prescribed hourly rate is £25 which
equates to 18 officer hours. A manual trawl of over 11,225 files x five
minutes per file would amount to over 935 officer hours at a cost of over
£20,000.

As a result, we would uphold our initial decision in refusing your request
under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please refer to
the refusal notice attached.

Other boroughs have provided this so I expect the same of all boroughs.

Unfortunately the information specific to your request, held by Trafford
Council is not available in an easily reportable format at present. We
cannot comment on the case management systems of other boroughs.

This request is crucial for the public to understand how Trafford Council
deals with children care orders by type by year.

Although, we are unable to fulfil your request by specific Care Order
types, we can instead provide you with the overall figures for the years
requested, as this information is recorded in an accessible format.

For this purpose, we enclose the Overall figures for Interim & Full Care
orders for the requested years:

Order 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Interim Care Order 39 87 78 124 77 74 46 36
Full Care Order 33 41 63 71 54 44 22 16

Conclusion

In conducting this review I have reassessed how the Council processed your
request, reviewed the information exempt and after careful consideration I
have concluded that the response sent to you on the 4^th October 2022 was
partly incorrect. This is in terms that we omitted to confirm that all
cases of the nature subject to the request are conducted by the Council’s
in-house legal team, for which we would like to apologise. We can confirm,
however that The Notice of Refusal Issued under Section 12, Freedom of
Information Act, (2000), was issued correctly.

If there is any way we can help assist in refining the initial request in
order that it can be dealt with under the appropriate limit, please do not
hesitate to get in contact.

I understand that this may not be the desired outcome of this internal
review, however if you remain dissatisfied, then you have the right to
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The
Information Commissioner can be contacted in writing at: Information
Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9
5AF.

The supply of information in response to a freedom of information request
does not confer an automatic right to re-use the information. Under UK
copyright law you can use any information supplied for the purposes of
private study and non-commercial research without requiring permission.
Similarly, information supplied can also be re-used for the purposes of
news reporting. An exception to this is photographs.

For other forms of re-use, for example publishing the information, you
would need the permission of the organisation or person who owns the
copyright. In the case of information produced by government departments
and agencies you can re-use the information under the Open Government
Licence. For information about this please see
[1]http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/o...

If, however, the copyright is identified as belonging to somebody else,
you will need to apply for permission. For information about how to
obtain permission from a third party, please go to Intellectual Property
Office’s website at [2]www.ipo.gov.uk

Yours sincerely,

Information Governance

From: Singh, Geeta On Behalf Of Data Protection
Sent: 05 October 2022 10:48
To: 'Sheila Gibb' <[FOI #896026 email]>
Subject: RE: 12224 Internal review of Freedom of Information request -
Care orders

Dear Ms Gibb,

Thank you for your email below regarding our response to your FOI,
reference 12224.

Your request has now been passed for internal review. We aim to complete
all internal reviews within 20 working days. We will notify you of the
outcome of the review and, where appropriate, provide the requested
information.

If you require any further information in the meantime, please do not
hesitate to contact us.

Kind Regards

Information Governance

Email: [3][Trafford Council request email]

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