Cost of academy transfers 2

The request was refused by Department for Education.

Dear Department for Education,

I have already submitted this FoI request by email but received no acknowledgement. I am therefore resubmitting the requestion.

I should be grateful if you could let me have the costs of transferring the academies listed below.

Goole High School
Heanor Gate Science College
Outwood Academy Foxhills
Medmerry Primary School
Luddendenfoot Academy
Montgomery High School
Redby Primary School
The Ridgeway School & Sixth Form College
East Point Academy
Hartsdown Academy
The Matthew Arnold School
Paignton Community and Sports Academy
Bexhill High Academy
Curledge Street Academy
Kings Ash Academy
Redriff Primary School
Childwall Sports & Science Academy
Dixons Kings Academy
St Mewan Community Primary School
The Duston School

Yours faithfully,

J Downs

Department for Education

Dear Mr/Ms Downs

Thank you for your recent enquiry. A reply will be sent to you as soon as possible. For information; the departmental standard for correspondence received is that responses should be sent within 20 working days as you are requesting information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Your correspondence has been allocated reference number 2016-0009141.

Thank you

Department for Education
Ministerial and Public Communications Division
Tel: 0370 000 2288

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Department for Education

Dear Ms Downs,

Thank you for your email of 9 February 2016, which broke your previous request into four separate requests and added two further requests for information. I am responding to all six requests in this letter, although you may like to note the reference numbers allocated to each of the requests in the event of any future communications:

2016-0009728
2016-0009735
2016-0009738
2016-0009745
2016-0009747
2016-0009750

I have dealt with your requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”) and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

I confirm that the Department holds information within scope of the requests.

The relevant Regulations which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244.

Regulation 5 provides that where two or more requests for information are made to a public authority by one person, the estimated cost of complying with any of the requests is to be taken to be the total costs of complying with all of them where the two or more requests relate to any extent to the same or similar information, and those requests are received within any period of 60 consecutive working days.

As you are aware from our response of 8 February 2016, the Department estimates that the cost of complying with your combined requests would exceed the cost threshold applicable to central Government. This is £600 and represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3½ working days locating, retrieving and extracting the information.

As the most recent six requests were all received on 9 February (i.e. within a 60 working day period) and the appropriate limit under section 12 of the Act would have been exceeded by complying with those requests, the Department is not therefore obliged to comply with any of your requests and under section 12 will not be processing them further.

If, however, you were to make a request for a narrower category of information or limit the scope of your requests, the Department may be able to comply with that request within the cost limit, though I cannot guarantee that this will be the case.

In order to narrow your requests, you may wish to consider selecting from your six requests on this issue or perhaps limiting a narrowed request to a particular theme.

I should point out that apart from narrowing your six existing requests, if the Department receives from you further requests which relate to any extent to the same or similar information within 60 days of at least one of those requests, your further requests will be aggregated with the earlier requests for cost threshold purposes.

We are separately taking forward your request of 9 February for an internal review into the handling of your request of 11 January 2016.

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me ([email address]). Please remember to quote the reference numbers above in any future communications.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you should make a complaint to the Department by writing to me within two calendar months of the date of this letter. Your complaint will be considered by an independent review panel, who were not involved in the original consideration of your request.

If you are not content with the outcome of your complaint to the Department, you may then contact the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Yours sincerely,

Raman Chattha

Sanctuary Buildings

Great Smith Street

London

SW1P 3BT

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