Costs of awarding Steven Maddox Freedom of the Borough

Waiting for an internal review by Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council of their handling of this request.

Dear Wirral Borough Council,

Please could you advise of the total costs of awarding Steven Maddox (the former Chief Executive) Freedom of the Borough which would include (which I would prefer to be itemised seperately in the answer):-

a) the costs of holding a full Council meeting including:-

i) officer & chief officer overtime
ii) reception for guests (including number of guests invited and criteria by which they were selected)
iii) engraving of name on Freedom of Borough list on lobby wall,
iv) total costs associated with holding full Council meeting (see also i, v and vi)
v) costs of sending out invites and overtime of Mayor's assistants
vi) cost of preparing public document pack for full Council meeting
vii) cost of writing report to committee that recommended he be awarded this honour

Yours faithfully,

John Brace

InfoMgr, FinDMT, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council

Good Morning,
Thank you for your recent email request for information shown below made
under The Freedom of Information Act 2000, in relation to the costs of
awarding Steve Maddox, the Freedom of the Borough.
There is currently some information still being collated and I will be
able to provide you with a complete response by Monday 17 January 2011.
The reason for the delay is due to the information relating to officer
time is still being awaited. Such information is provided on four weekly
cycle, hence the delay in providing you a complete response to your
request.

I apologise for the delay in providing you with a complete response.

Should you have any queries concerning this matter please do not
hesitate to contact me.
Kind Regards
Jane Corrin
Information Manager

This information supplied to you is copyrighted to Wirral Council and
continues to be protected by the 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 our specific permission, may involve licensing and the
application of a charge

show quoted sections

Dear InfoMgr, FinDMT,

Thank you for that response. I appreciate you are waiting for information to come to you, however Wirral Council has had this request since the start of this month.

It has been at least four weeks since the meeting referred to was held (so there would've been at least the end of a four week cycle covering this period), so I am a little puzzled by this response, which seems to be just a way to extend the 20 day deadline.

This should not stop you providing a partial answer to the other parts of the FOI request.

Sect 1 (3)(b) of the Act does not require Wirral Council to comply with the deadline where it "reasonably requires further information in order to identify and locate the information requested".

Information regarding payroll and overtime is (from what I remember) held on computer and therefore should be able to be accessed by Wirral Council at any time.

I am therefore requesting an internal review, as well as clarification by what is meant regarding this four week cycle.

Yours sincerely,

John Brace

InfoMgr, FinDMT, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council

1 Attachment

Good Morning,
Please refer to the attachment as partial response to your enquiry.
Some people prefer to have the whole request answered in one response,
but as you are happy for a partial response, I have attached the
information we have.

I note your comments made below. May I offer you my assurance that the
Council is not seeking a way to deliberately extend the 20 day deadline.
Wirral Council strives to always answer as many FOI enquiries as it can
within the 20 working day time frame and we are always disappointed if
we have to respond after the 20 working days.

Each request is done in date order, as far as practical and the Council
received over 70 requests in December. Your request is due up by 31st
December 2010 and officers are working on retrieving the outstanding
information.

Kind Regards
Jane Corrin
Information Manager
Wirral Council

This information supplied to you is copyrighted to Wirral Council and
continues to be protected by the 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 our specific permission, may involve licensing and the
application of a charge

show quoted sections

Dear InfoMgr, FinDMT,

Thank you for that response. However I respectfully point out that the Information Commissioner has recently criticised Wirral Council for being slow at responding to FOI requests.

I am happy for the partial response I have received and look forward to the rest of the information as soon as it is available.

You are right that the 20 days "expires" on the 31st December, however as mentioned in your previous communication the rest of the information is not likely to be sent till mid-January.

I am aware (already) of the volume of FOI requests Wirral Council receive and that you are "at the mercy" of other departments within Wirral Council getting back to you in a timely manner. Clearly there are ways the current system could be improved (as has been discussed at many Standards Committee meetings).

Yours sincerely,

John Brace

Paul Cardin left an annotation ()

Thanks to John for his request. In the interests of making the information as OPEN and as VIEWABLE as possible, I have reproduced it here and included a ££TOTAL:

Guest list:
84 guests were invited plus 66 Councillors and 7 Chief Officers. Approximately 51 invited guests turned up on the night, 52 Councillors and 7 Chief Officers.
The guest list included ex Mayors/Mayoresses, Hon Aldermen, MPs, Lord Lieutenant, High Sheriff - plus Steve's personal guest list.

Cost:
Buffet - £705.00
Alcohol - £121.15
Flowers - £30.00
Photographer - £258.50
Scroll - £846.00

TOTAL: £1960.65

John Brace left an annotation ()

Thanks Paul for that.

However, I'll just point out there is still more to come as Wirral Council are still calculating overtime of officers too.

Dear InfoMgr, FinDMT,

Your previous message stated "I will be
able to provide you with a complete response by Monday 17 January 2011"

However the complete response did not arrive. As I'm a kind hearted person I have waited another week, but still no satisfaction. Therefore I am requesting an internal review on why the remaining parts of my request have been refused on the following grounds:-

1) As pointed out by yourself the time limit expired weeks ago

2) No explanation has been given as to why the information is refused or why its taking so long. Wirral Council has had nearly a month longer than it should have had.

3) If the information is to be refused, no reason has been given (which is required by the legislation).

Yours sincerely,

John Brace

Pete Sheffield left an annotation ()

WBC have recently disclosed that they try to complete internal reviews within 20 days. They are running way past this date at present.

Paul Cardin left an annotation ()

We're now well into May 2011 and still nothing. It's really frustrating to see a public body behaving so shabbily and without a care for their public.

John Brace left an annotation ()

Don't worry Paul, after tonight two political parties charge at Wirral Borough Council will enter opposition and be extremely critical of the way it's being run. :D

What surprises me is that with so few FOI requests a month at WBC, it seems there are deliberate attempts to thwart requests and fob people off.

Bear in mind most FOI requests only take a few hours to complete.

This is not all Jane Corrin's fault as what power or influence does she have to force an answer from other departments? When they are held to account by politicians at WBC over FOI they merely fudge answers or refuse to have present officers who know what's going on.