Environmental Records funding

The request was successful.

Dear Bristol City Council,

Please could you release, via this What Do They Know request, any information you hold relating to the decisions by North Somerset Council to a) cease their funding to Bristol City Council's Environmental Records Centre and b) fund environmental records management activity by the Forest of Avon Trust.

Many thanks,

Susan Davis

Freedom of Information, Bristol City Council

Thank you for your request for information. You should expect to receive a response within the 20 working day limit.

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Dear Bristol City Council,

I do not appear to have received a reply to my request for information, and I believe that the statutory 20-day period for responses has now passed. Please could you contact me to let me know a) why the request is delayed and b) when I can expect to receive a response.

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis

Steve Knight, Bristol City Council

Dear Susan Davis,

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request (replicated below)
and i apologise for the slight delay in responding.

"Please could you release, via this What Do They Know request, any
information you hold relating to the decisions by North Somerset Council
to a) cease their funding to Bristol City Council's Environmental
Records Centre and b) fund environmental records management activity by
the Forest of Avon Trust."

The records centre have provided the following information within the
scope of your request (which is in addition to the information already
in the public domain, via similar requests to other local authorities at
the What do they know website) ......

At the BRERC Management Board Meeting of 13/9/10
Under item 1 Funding Situation, it was noted..

● N. Somerset - no news received.
Action: TCm to contact Mark McGregor to ascertain N Somerset’s
position for 2011/12.

Email From BCC (Tim Corum) to N Somerset (Mark McGregor) on
16/09/10...

"As you can see we had a useful meeting and touched on a number of
issues, most pertinent was the future funding discussion. As you can see
we took the temperature from the unitaries present and it seems that on
the one hand BRERC was seen as being a likely target for grant reduction
from unitaries, while on the other is was considered as a service that
might be able to make a strong case for DEFRA support as a front line
income generating and volunteer based service.

We have asked Tim Corner to produce some options for us based on a
reduction in core funding of 20%. This figure was based on the
understanding we have of what is likely to happen to our grant funding
next year. As you can see from the notes although Banes expect to make a
reduction of 20% in year 1 they anticipate the funding will stabilise
after that, S Glos are looking at 20% phased over a three year period
and Bristol are not expecting to make any reduction in its cash or
in-kind contribution. We also suggested Tim do a worst case scenario of
reduction of 60% as a planning tool.

Obviously the final decisions on all this will have to wait until after
October. What we have suggested is that Tim produces an options paper
with a view to agreeing a funding partnership in December.

In the meantime invoices for the current year have been sent out, and I
am anxious to draw funding down as soon as we can.

I hope this quick summary is helpful. I wasn't sure if you were still
the contact for BRERC. Apologies if things have changed if they have,
please let me know who is the correct contact for NS."

Email response from N Somerset (Mark McGregor) to BCC (Tim Corum) on
16/9/10...

"North Somerset Council are currently looking at budget reductions of
40%. As you can imagine this has far reaching ramifications for the
services that we offer and means that some may cease. As a Service
Manager I am looking at how to debase the services that I am responsible
for profiled at 15% next year and the residual of the 40% over a further
3 year period. As such it is very highly unlikely that North Somerset
Council will be looking to purchase information from BRERC as of the
next financial year. I will have a clearer view on this next week and
will write to you then."

Email from BCC (Tim Corum) to N Somerset (Mark McGregor) on
11/11/10...

"At the BRERC management board meeting of the 13th September we agreed
that Tim Corner would meet with each organisation that currently
supports the unit with an annual grant, to review the current level of
service provision. Our intention is to clarify what kinds of services
each organisation needs and to match this to the level of funding for
2011/12.

In your last email of 19th September you hinted that North Somerset
might not be in a position to purchase services from BRERC in 2011/12.
You did say you would clarify this and I do now need to know what your
position is.

All existing funding partners are expecting to support BRERC next year
and are keen to consolidate the partnership with a longer-term
agreement. We also have the support of NE, Wessex Water and the
Environment Agency. Our stakeholder event this year demonstrated very
strong support for the centre, which is seen as a good example of
regional partnership working and volunteer engagement as well as a
valued resource for business. North Somerset's continued support is
vitally important to BRERC, not just in terms of funding but also
because it balances the regional partnership and ensures a strong
strategic fit with the West of England LEP.

We do need to know what the commitment is from North Somerset so we can
effectively plan for the future. Our major concern is the impact of any
loss of funding to the staffing budget, since this might result in
redundancies, the costs of which will have to be covered by the current
funders.

I would be grateful if you could confirm your position in writing by
the end of November so we can finalise the agreement by January 1st. We
are meeting on Monday 15th November at 10am in Bristol, so it would be
very helpful if a representative from North Somerset could be present to
help in decision making."

Email response from N Somerset (Mark McGregor) to BCC (Tim Corum) on
15/11/10...

"Now that we are past the CSR and our budget proposals have been
considered by the Corporate Management Team I am in a position to
confirm that North Somerset Council will not purchase services from
BRERC in future. This will be from 2011/2012.

With budget reductions across our services between 30-40% we having to
redesign and in many cases redefine what services we deliver and how we
deliver them. The decision around BRERC is a result of this process."

This response should answer your request in full, however if you are
not satisfied with this response or wish to lodge an appeal against any
exemptions that may have been applied, you can do so by writing to the
Data Protection Officer at Bristol City Council Legal Services, The
Council House, College Green, Bristol, BS99 7PH or [Bristol City Council request email].
Details of the complaints procedure can be found at
http://www.bristol.gov.uk/complaints.

If, after you have exhausted the council’s complaints procedure, you
are still not satisfied with the response you have received you have the
right to complain to the Information Commissioner, details of your right
to complain can be found at http://www.ico.gov.uk/complaints.aspx

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obtained from the copyright holders.

Yours Sincerely
Steve Knight
Bristol City Council
Neighbourhood & City Development
Development Services

______________________________________________________________________
'Do it online' with our growing range of online services - http://www.bristol.gov.uk/services

Visit our consultation finder and have your say: www.bristol.gov.uk/consultationfinder

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Dear Steve,

Many thanks for your reply to my FOI request. Please could I ask you to send me a copy of the options paper(s) referred to in your reply. If you wish to treat this as a separate FOI request from my original one, that is fine.

Could you also confirm that information held within the Records Centre itself has been searched in preparing the response to my request. You may recall that there has been some confusion over the exact legal status of the records centre in the past, but the City Council confirmed that it is not an independent body in response to an FOI request made by another user of WhatDoTheyKnow here: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/co....

Yours sincerely,

Susan Davis