FOI Responses

The request was refused by City of London Corporation.

Dear City of London Corporation,

Please provide a complete list of the Job Title and Pay Grade (salary details not required) of every member of your authority responsible for responding to Freedom of Information requests.

Thank you.

Yours faithfully,

Jacob Paul

COL-EB-InformationOfficer, City of London Corporation

Dear Jacob Paul,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 (FOIA) – REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

The City of London (CoL) acknowledges receipt of your request for information of 1 October 2020.

Public authorities are required to respond to requests within the statutory timescale of 20 working days beginning from the first working day after they receive a request. The Act does not always require public authorities to disclose the information which they hold.

The FOIA applies to the CoL as a local authority, police authority and port health authority. The CoL is the local and police authority for the “Square Mile”, ie the historic City of London, and not for London as a whole. Please see the following page containing a link to a map (City of London - Interactive Mapping), which shows the local authority area covered by the CoL:
https://www.mapping.cityoflondon.gov.uk/...

The CoL does have some functions, including Port Health Authority functions, which extend beyond the City boundary. For further information please see: www.cityoflondon.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely,

Information Officer
Comptroller & City Solicitor’s Department
City of London
Tel: 020-7332 1243
www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

________________________________________________________

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Whitehead, Ian, City of London Corporation

Dear Jacob Paul,

 

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000 (FOIA) - REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

 

Following your request of 1 October 2020, and our acknowledgement of 2
October 2020, the City of London (CoL) responds as follows. 

 

Please provide a complete list of the Job Title and Pay Grade (salary
details not required) of every member of your authority responsible for
responding to Freedom of Information requests.

 

This response acts as a part refusal notice, under section 40(2) of the
FOIA,  in accordance with section 17 of the FOIA.

 

The CoL operates an Access to Information Representative (AIN) Group of
some 90 individual officers located across all Departments of the CoL. It
is this group that is responsible, in their respective Department, for
referring new request to the appropriate person to respond to the
information requested, collating information supplied into a formal FOIA
response and for sending responses to members of the public, such as
yourself.

 

The appointment as an AIN Representative is additional to any officer’s
main duties and therefore does not reflect in their job title or in their
salary. Additionally, it may be correct to say that all officers of the
CoL are asked to assist with FOI request as FOIA requests are varied in
content.

 

A full staff list, by department and without any personal identifiers, is
available at the end of the CoL Organisation Structure webpage, via the
following link:
[1]https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/about-us....

 

Additionally, the CoL applies the s40(2) exemption – personal data to
further disclosure of information that may identify any individual.

 

FOIA Section 40(2) exemption – Personal information.

 

The CoL considers that, in accordance with the FOIA section 40(2)
exemption ('personal information'), it should refuse to disclose the
information in relation to the ‘Job Title and Pay Grade (salary details
not required) of every member of your authority responsible for responding
to Freedom of Information requests.’

 

Although you have requested what is intended to be purely statistical
information, and have not sought to directly obtain any personal
information, we consider in this instance that, while we can confirm that
we hold the relevant information, it is correct to refuse disclosure of
the actual job titles and pay grade of individuals who carry out the
duties required to respond to FOIA request could occur due to the nature
of the job that they carry out.

 

The CoL considers that to disclose the information under the FOIA would be
a breach of the First Principle under the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR), which Regulation is also integrated into the Data
Protection Act 2018 (DPA). The Principle concerns the fair and lawful
processing of personal information. The CoL also considers that there
would be no expectation by the individual staff involved of routine
disclosure of such information under the FOIA.

 

Please note that a public authority has to consider a disclosure under the
FOIA as a disclosure to the world. We note the Information Tribunal’s
statement that “Disclosure under [the] FOIA is effectively an unlimited
disclosure to the public as a whole, without conditions” (Information
Tribunal Appeal Decision EA/2006/0011 & 0013), which was also referred to
by the Information Commissioner in Decision Notice FS 50294078. The CoL
would therefore have to view disclosure of the personal data as a
considerable overriding of the DPA.

 

In conclusion, with regard to this exemption, the CoL does not see any
legitimate interests in the public having access to the information and
considers that disclosure would not pay due respect to the rights and
freedoms of the data subjects, ie in this instance the individual staff
members who carry out the duties of an AIN Representative. We do not see
any conditions under Article 6 (which concerns conditions for processing
personal data) of the GDPR which would permit disclosure.

 

The CoL also does not consider that there are any conditions under Section
1(2) of the DPA (which refers to the GDPR, and in this instance the
relevant Article of which would be, as said, Article 6) which would permit
disclosure.

 

We hope that this response is of assistance.

 

If you wish to make a complaint about the way the CoL has managed your
enquiry, please make your complaint in writing to email address:
[2][email address]. For a link to the CoL’s FOI complaints
procedure, please visit the following page:
[3]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/Feedback, at the end of which is located the
FOI complaints procedure. If, having used the CoL’s FOI Complaints
Procedure, you are still dissatisfied, you may request the Information
Commissioner to investigate. Please contact: Information Commissioner,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. Telephone:
(01625) 545700.  Website: [4]http://www.ico.org.uk/.

 

The FOIA applies to the CoL as a local authority, police authority and
port health authority; and to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
(GSMD), which it manages. Subject to any other statutory provisions
requiring the CoL to disclose information, release of information outside
the scope of the Act is subject to the discretion of the CoL.

 

The CoL holds the copyright in this communication. Its supply does not
give a right to re-use in a way that would infringe that copyright, for
example, by making copies, publishing and issuing copies to the public or
to any other person. Brief extracts of any of the material may be
reproduced under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988 (sections 29 and 30) for the purposes of research for
non-commercial purposes, private study, criticism, review and news
reporting, subject to an acknowledgement of the copyright owner.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

 

 

Corporate HR Unit 

Town Clerk’s Department

City Of London

T: 020 7332 1441

[5]www.cityoflondon.gov.uk

 

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References

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