Grace on Fossil Fuels
Dear Downing College, Cambridge,
This is a formal request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Could you please provide any email correspondence, and information relating to the recent Regent's House Grace relating to fossil fuel ties from 01/11/2022 and 31/03/2023.
To keep information retrieval focused, please search email records of:
(1) College senior leadership team: Alan Bookbinder; Gavin Flynn; Zoe Barber; Guy Williams;
(2) College lists consisting of: fellows; governing body
(3) All members of the college's governing body
Key word searching: “fossil fuel”, “grace”, and “Regent House” would direct searches to the following information within the time constraints of the request.
If you are to invoke Section 43 to withhold information in relation to any of these questions please note you must provide details of the exact FOIA exemption, details of who would be prejudiced by this information, and a public interest test justifying a conclusion with arguments for and against the release of the information.
If you are to invoke Section 12 to withhold information in relation to any of these questions please provide details of how locating, retrieving and extracting this information would exceed the appropriate limit of £450 as set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004. Please also be aware of your duty under section 16 (1) of the Act to advise and assist me in narrowing my request to bring it within the appropriate limit.
Thank you very much for your assistance with this request. If you would like any clarification on the information I have asked for, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I look forward to receiving your response in the next 20 working days.
Could you also kindly confirm upon receipt of this email.
Yours faithfully,
Sam Greenwood
Dear Sam,
Thank you for your FoI request to Downing College regarding email
correspondence and information concerning the recent Regent's House Grace
relating to fossil fuel ties from 01/11/2022 and 31/03/2023.
We contacted the College Senior Managers named in your request and asked
them to perform a search of all email accounts used to conduct College
business using your search terms “fossil fuel” and “grace” and
“Regent House”. Where the relevant email accounts were hosted on our
College systems, we conducted a centralised email search using the same
search terms. The combined searches returned a small number of emails
which have been combined into the attached PDF (redacted where
appropriate). These searches would also have picked up any emails received
from or sent to Fellows’ email lists that had been retained by the
recipients. We do not maintain separate archives of emails circulated via
College mailing lists. However, for question 3, we believe it would take
longer than the 18 hours allowed under the Act (section 12 exemption) to
find and retrieve the information for all members of the Governing Body.
There are 51 members of the Governing Body, the overwhelming majority of
which do not hold email accounts in College and would therefore need to
perform individual searches. We believe that communicating, conducting and
co-ordinating a complete return from such a search would take the time
taken to respond to your request over the limit of 18 hours.
Further information about making a request to the College, including your
legal rights if you are not satisfied with our response may be found at
[1]Making a Freedom of Information or personal data request | Downing
College Cambridge
Best wishes,
Paul Boult
Records & Information Manager
Downing College, Cambridge
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