Cost of mandatory volunteer courses

The request was partially successful.

Dear West Sussex County Council,

Please kindly supply a list of mandatory volunteer courses and the cost of each course to your council. If you need us to specify which volunteers, we're mostly interested in the ones who provide basic computer training for adults. Although we are particularly interested in volunteers who run basic computer training courses, we would prefer a complete list of all mandatory courses for all volunteers and the cost of each course if possible. If not possible then please kindly provide a list of mandatory courses specifically for volunteers who provide basic computer training for adults and the cost of each course.

Yours faithfully,

Lee Jefferson
Journalist

Freedom of Information Act,

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Jefferson,

 

Thank you for both of your enquiries, which has been forwarded to the
appropriate officers for a response. The usual timescale for a response is
twenty working days, that is by or on 22.09.17.

 

If for any reason the Council needs to extend this timescale you will be
notified in accordance with the relevant legislation.

 

Please note that in 2012 the County Council adopted a position in
principle that FoI and EIR requests to West Sussex County Council and the
Council's responses may be published on the Council's website in a
suitably anonymised form. This is in addition to the individual response
to the requestor, and in line with the Council's commitment to
transparency and open data.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

Helen Thompson.

 

Freedom Of Information |  [1]West Sussex County Council | Location:
County Hall, Chichester PO19 1RQ
E-mail: [2][email address]

 

[3]WSCC-logo_ICS-logo

Freedom of Information Act,

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Jefferson,

 

Thank you for your enquiry below and attached, and please accept my
apologies for the delay.

 

In order to identify and locate the information that you have asked for
the Council reasonably requires further information. I will not be able to
take this matter further without extra information from you.

 

In particular, it would be useful to know  if you mean ‘mandatory’ do you
mean by law, and all those volunteers working for West Sussex County
Council or just in a specific area?

 

If so, which area?

 

I look forward to hearing from you.

 

Kind regards,

 

Helen Thompson.

 

Freedom Of Information |  [1]West Sussex County Council | Location:
County Hall, Chichester PO19 1RQ
E-mail: [2][email address]

 

[3]WSCC-logo_ICS-logo

 

Dear Freedom of Information Act,

Thank you for your request of clarification.

'Mandatory' means all courses which you've informed your volunteers are 'mandatory' (regardless of legality and must be completed). Two possible situations apply.

Situation 1: If the individual is about to become a volunteer with you then you would state they must complete the mandatory course(s) first. Failure to complete the course(s) or failure to pass the course(s) would result in them not being allowed to serve as a volunteer with your council.

Situation 2: If they are already an active volunteer with you then you would give them a deadline by which time they must complete such course(s) by. Failure to complete the course(s) or failure to pass the course(s) would result in them being terminated as a volunteer with your council once the deadline is reached.

Volunteering scope - Our request is for all volunteers working for West Sussex County Council.

Yours sincerely,

Lee Jefferson
Journalist

Jen Bradbury,

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Jefferson,

 

I refer to your request for information, which has been dealt with under
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

 

Your request was:

 

Please kindly supply a list of mandatory volunteer courses and the cost of
each course to your council.  If you need us to specify which volunteers,
we're mostly interested in the ones who provide basic computer training
for adults.  Although we are particularly interested in volunteers who run
basic computer training courses, we would prefer a complete list of all
mandatory courses for all volunteers and the cost of each course if
possible.  If not possible then please kindly provide a list of mandatory
courses specifically for volunteers who provide basic computer training
for adults and the cost of each course.

 

We have now completed a search for the information which you requested and
I confirm the Authority holds information relevant to the request.

 

However, as volunteering is not centrally managed, we estimate that to
determine the mandatory courses applied for all volunteers throughout the
Council would mean the cost of complying with your request would exceed
the appropriate limit. The appropriate limit has been specified in
regulations and for local authorities it is set at £450. This represents
the estimated cost of one person spending 2 1/2 working days in
determining whether the Department holds the information, and locating,
retrieving and extracting the information. Under section 12 of the Freedom
of Information Act the Department is not obliged to comply with your
request and we will not be processing your wider request further.

 

We have therefore considered the narrower part of your request. We have
around 50 volunteer Computer Buddies across the library service. They
provide informal digital assistance to residents, almost always on a one
to one basis and with a focus on people with little or no IT knowledge.
They do not run courses. The library service assess each volunteer before
accepting them; overwhelmingly their IT and training skills are very good.
We do not therefore require them to attend any mandatory courses, and
subsequently there is no cost.

 

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Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most
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information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission
before reproducing any third party (non WSCC) information.

 

If you have any queries about this letter, please contact me. Please
remember to quote the reference number 945440 in any future
communications.

 

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may
wish to ask for a review of our decision via [1][email address]. 

 

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal
review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

 

The Information Commissioner's Office,

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

Jen Bradbury

Team Manager: Practice Development

 

 

[2]Jen Bradbury | Team Manager: Practice Development, Community Safety
and Wellbeing Service, Communities Directorate, [3]West Sussex County
Council | Location: Room 237, County Hall, West Street, Chichester,
PO19 1RQ
Internal: x23829 | External: 0330 22 23829|E-mail:
[4][email address]