High Court Family Division - Requests for Permission to appeal

The request was partially successful.

Dear Her Majesty’s Courts and the Tribunals Service,

when looking to the statistics court-statistics-additional-tables-jan-mar-2014 in tab 5.9. there is information from the court of appeal.

In 2013 there were 1142 total appeals filed. I suppose these are the requests for permission to appeal.

(1) Where are the figures for 2014 ?

Further, there were 80 cases classified as 'Otherwise disposed of' which is explained as '6) Otherwise disposed of: Appeals given a final result of 'Not our Jurisdiction', 'Totally without merit', 'Varied with consent', 'Other result’, and 'Remitted'
Kindly let me know the details for all the cases where the court of appeal refuses permission to appeal without a hearing. In this case the appellant is therefore unable to request that the decision is reconsidered.
Therefore I request for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 the number of cases where the court has refused the permission to appeal without a hearing.
Let me know:
(2) The year (2.1), the category (2.2) e.g. 'totally without merit', 'other result' etc, the reasons (2.3) for this and also where the cases originated from (e.g. family division).

Yours faithfully,

Klaus Zinser

London RSU Kilo,

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Zinser,

Please find attached the acknowledgement of your freedom of information request.

Kind regards,
Jade Groves

London Regional Support Unit | HMCTS | Post Point 9.02 | 102 Petty France | London | SW1H 9AJ or DX 152380 Westminster 8

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London RSU Kilo,

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Dear Mr Zinser
 
Please find attached a response to your recent FOI request.
 
Thanks
Sam

Sam Guy

London Regional Support Unit | HMCTS | Post Point 9.02 | 102 Petty
France | London | SW1H 9AJ or DX 152380 Westminster 8

Phone 020 3334 2988 | Fax 0870 324 0126
[1][email address]

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Dear London RSU Kilo,

dear Sir,
under (1) i have asked for the numbers of 2014 as this year has finished seven months ago. Just the same figures that were given for the previous years.

Under (2) i have asked
'therefore I request for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 the number of cases where the court has refused the permission to appeal without a hearing.
Let me know:
(2) The year (2.1), the category (2.2) e.g. 'totally without merit', 'other result' etc, the reasons (2.3) for this and also where the cases originated from (e.g. family division).'

These are less than 100 cases per year were I have requested a more detailed analysis and not an analysis of several thousand cases. Please review you previous answer as I think there is a misunderstanding.

Yours sincerely,

Klaus Zinser

London RSU Kilo,

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Zinser
 
Please find attached an acknowledgement for your Freedom of Information
request.
 
Regards
Stephanie McQueen   

 

London Regional Support Unit
Post Point 9.02 9th Floor
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ

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Dear London RSU Kilo, Dear Ms Stefanie Mc Queen,

on 12th August (one months ago) you wrote: "The Freedom of Information Act includes a number of exemptions to releasing information. Some of these are qualified exemptions which require us to consider whether it is in the public interest to disclose or withhold the information. In these circumstances we may need more time to consider your request, and if this is the case I will write to you by the date above to inform you of when you can expect to receive a response. "

Has this been clarifed and will I get the requested information now ?

Yours sincerely,

Klaus Zinser

Greenwood, Jason,

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Dear Mr Zinser,
 
Firstly please accept MoJ's sincere apologies for the delay in providing
you with this reply.
 
Following my investigation of your Internal Review request I now attach my
response.
 
If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact me.
 
Kind regards
 
Jason

Jason Greenwood
Delivery Manager

HMCTS - Special Educational Needs & Disability Tribunal, Care Standards
Tribunal and Primary Health Lists | Darlington Magistrates Court,
Parkgate, Darlington, DL1 1RU | T- 01325 289350

 

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Internet e-mail is not a secure medium. Any reply to this message
could be intercepted and read by someone else. Please bear that in
mind when deciding whether to send material in response to this message
by e-mail.

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Klaus Zinser left an annotation ()

Thats the last answer with more detailed figures further on in the document attached:
-----
Quote:
".. I believe the response you previously received was incorrect and I have overturned the original decision. Please accept my apologies, and please find enclosed the information that you requested. I can advise the “other” category in the statistics included in Annex A below have not been previously published, and are being providing under the FoIA. However, all the rest of the information is already in the public domain but is also included in the tables for your advice and assistance, and ease of reference.

I will now address each part of your request in sequence.

1. “under (1) i have asked for the numbers of 2014 as this year has finished seven months ago. Just the same figures that were given for the previous years.
I can confirm that this data is available on the MoJ’s website. This means that the information is exempt under section 21 of the FoI Act because it is reasonably accessible to you. The Quarterly reports ceased following a consultation but I am pleased to inform you that you can access the new reports on another area of the MOJ’s website at the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics.... When accessing the link the data you require is found under the tab 3.9.

Section 21 (1) of the FoIA exempts disclosure of information that is reasonably accessible by other means, and the terms of the exemption mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for you to have the information.

You can find out more about section 21 by reading the extract from the FoIA and some guidance points we consider when applying this exemption, attached at the end of this letter.

You can also find more information by reading the full text of the FoIA, available at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000... and further guidance http://www.justice.gov.uk/information-ac...
However, for your ease I have placed the data into Annex A at the end of this letter.
2. “Under (2) i have asked 'therefore I request for 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 the number of cases where the court has refused the permission to appeal without a hearing.”
After collaborating with colleagues in the Royal Courts of Justice I can confirm that this data is available in the data tables. For each permission to appeal which was refused without an appeal, these figures can be found under the headings Dismissed by consent and Struck Out and the figures from 2010 to 2014 can be found at the following link https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics... under tab 3.9.
3. Let me know: (2) The year (2.1), the category (2.2) e.g. 'totally without merit', 'other result' etc, the reasons (2.3) for this and also where the cases originated from (e.g. family division).'
These are less than 100 cases per year were I have requested a more detailed analysis and not an analysis of several thousand cases. Please review you previous answer as I think there is a misunderstanding.”

I can confirm that the original exemption of section 12 (1) of the FoI Act was incorrectly applied for this data and the initial estimate of case files that needed to be searched through and the process was also incorrect. I have made further enquiries and although we do hold this data it would require a high level of skill by using a specialist member of staff either a Senior Analyst or Programmer to extract the data from the database using a customised script to extract and create this data. However the FoI Act does not oblige a public authority to create information to answer a request if the requested information is not held. It does not place a duty upon public authorities to answer a question unless recorded information exists. The FoIA duty is to only provide the recorded information held. I therefore, overturn the decision as the correct response to this question should have been that the MoJ does not hold the specific data you have requested in this part of your request.
I also apologise that the original response did not make an effort to make a suggestion to refine your request, of which could have been for a shorter period, or for one of the business areas such as Bankruptcy.
However, I am happy to disclose this information outside of the FoIA on a discretionary basis, of which I attach in Annex A.
I must point out that the headings totally without merit are not used, and should have been removed from the footnote of the statistics, of which this will be removed in the next publication of these figures.

You have the right to appeal our decision if you think it is incorrect. Details can be found in the ‘How to Appeal’ section attached at the end of this letter. .."