Dear Sir or Madam,

There was an aborted appeal hearing for an appeal against the outcome of the recent "assimilation to the new grading structure and single salary spine exercise" on 20 May 2008 at 2pm in the Council Room of the University. At this aborted hearing the appellant notified the Chairman of the appeal panel that they wished to record the public part of the hearing, in accordance with the advance notification of this intention they had provided to the University's HR Division.

On being informed of this, the Chairman waved a piece of paper at the appellant (who was unable to see this what, if anything, was written on this piece of paper). The Chairman informed the appellant that they had been instructed by the Personnel Department that the appeal could not proceed if the appellant insisted on recording it.

Please supply a copy, in electronic form, of the instructions from the University's HR Division to the appeal panel (and/or any or all of the individual panel members) regarding the recording of the appeal hearing.

Should these instructions contain information which could not be revealed to me under the terms of the Data Protection Act 1998, such information is to be redacted.

Yours faithfully,

Bruce Beckles

Dear Sir or Madam,

As you will no doubt be aware, the response of your predecessor to the "substantially similar request" to which you refer (FOI/2008/75) did not supply any information. It was, in effect, a refusal notice, but one which did not specify the exemption under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which was being used to refuse to provide the information, as required by Section 17(1) of the Act. Therefore, that request was not properly handled under the Act.

Consequently, the University has *not* complied with my previous request for information (as that previous request was not handled properly under the terms of the Act) and Section 14(2) is therefore not engaged in relation to this request, since that section is only engaged where the public authority "has previously complied with a request for information", which is not the case here.

Furthermore, Section 14(2) is only engaged if a reasonable interval between requests has *not* elapsed - as you know, almost a full calendar year has elapsed between the previous request and this one and in that time the person who handles FOI requests has changed. It therefore seems reasonable that, even if the University had properly handled the previous request by stating the exemption(s) on which it was relying to refuse that request (which it didn't), it should be prepared to consider afresh this new "substantially similar request".

I had hoped that the University would be reasonable in its handling of this current request (FOI-2009-57), and consequently did not bring up the subject of request FOI/2008/75 in making it. If, however, you are not prepared to handle this request properly, then please pass the following on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews:

I am writing to request an internal review of University of Cambridge's handling of my FOI request 'Instructions to appeal panel on 20 May 2008'. I also wish to request an internal review of a previous request (FOI/2008/75) (the details of which the University has on file).

A full history of this current FOI request (FOI-2009-57) and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/in...

I wish the handling of this request (FOI-2009-57) to be reviewed as I do not believe that Section 14(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is engaged for two reasons:

(1) The previous "substantially similar request" was not correctly handled under the Act (see complaint below), and so the University did not comply with it as is required for Section 14(2) to be engaged in respect of future requests; and

(2) Particularly in light of the change of personnel handling FOI requests, a reasonable time interval (almost a year) has elapsed since the previous "substantially similar request" and this one.

I also wish to complain that the University did not respond to my request FOI-2009-57 within 20 working days as required by Section 10(1) of the Act, since 20 working days from the date I e-mailed my request is 2 June 2009, and the University did not respond until 3 June 2009. Note that Awareness Guidance No 11 (Time for compliance) issued by the Information Commissioner

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

states:

"3. When is a request received by the public authority?

A request is received when it is delivered to the public authority, or when it is delivered to the inbox of a member of staff. The date of receipt is not the date the request is passed to the appropriate person for processing."

It is thus clear that neither the date on which the relevant individual checked the relevant inbox nor the date on which the University acknowledged the request is in any way relevant to when the 20 working days from receipt of the request expires.

Furthermore, Section 10(1) requires the University to respond to my request "promptly" - given that the University has refused to provide the requested information on the basis that I had made a previous "substantially similar request", 21 working days can hardly be described as "prompt".

I also wish to request a review of the handling of my previous FOI request, FOI/2008/75, as this request was refused but without any of the Act's exemptions being given as grounds for this refusal. This is in clear breach of Section 17(1) of the Act.

Finally, I would remind you that the Information Commissioner's Office has already had occasion to communicate with the University regarding its failure to carry out internal reviews of FOI requests in a reasonable time period (ICO Case Reference Number FS50246295). I would hope, therefore, that this request for an internal review would be handled in accordance with the Information Commissioner's guidance regarding the time limits on carrying out internal reviews (Good Practice Guidance 5):

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/l...

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

Dear Dr Allen,

Thank you for your response, which has finally dealt with my request in accordance with the terms of the Freedom of Information Act (2000). In particular, thank you for your efforts to discharge the University's duty under Section 16 of the Act, something notably absent from the handling of the earlier request (FOI/2008/75). I can now state that at this time I do not wish to initiate a formal review of the handling of either this request or the earlier request (FOI/2008/75).

However, notwithstanding my lack of desire to initiate a formal review, I do not accept the arguments advanced in your response regarding the use of Section 14(2) and the claim that request FOI/2008/75 did not fail to comply with Section 17(1).

It should be apparent from both the wording of this request and of FOI/2008/75 that, at best, the information that was in my possession was the Chairman of the appeal panel's *interpretation* of instructions from the HR Division. I have no way of knowing whether that interpretation is either correct or complete, which is why I asked for a copy of the instructions themselves.

It is clear from my request that I do not possess the *document* that I have asked for, and so to refuse to supply it on the grounds that I already have it is unreasonable as well as factually incorrect. As you know, paragraph 6 of the Explanatory Notes of the Act [1], as well as the Information Commissioner [2], take the view that the Act entitles me to copies of documents, not just the information contained therein.

If you believe that it is genuinely the case that the Act allows you to refuse documents on the grounds that the requester may already have the information contained within them, I would appreciate it if you would cite the relevant part of the Act. If you do not do so, I must warn you that should you attempt to refuse a future FOI request from myself on such grounds, I will take the matter to the Information Commissioner (after exhausting the University's FOI complaints procedure).

Finally, I would like to contrast your behaviour in handling my request with that of your predecessor:

Your predecessor refused to supply the document requested without citing an exemption (in clear violation of Section 17(1) of the Act), and did not discharge the University's duty to provide advice and assistance under Section 16 of the Act.

In contrast, you have informed me that the document in question does not exist, thus fulfilling the obligations under Section 1(1)(a) of the Act and have also done an admirable job of discharging the University's duty to provide advice and assistance under Section 16 of the Act.

This seems to me to provide a practical demonstration of the validity of my argument that a change of personnel constitutes a reasonable interval between substantially similar requests. A logical consequence of the belief that a change of personnel does *not* constitute a reasonable interval is that the expected behaviour in relation to fulfilling the request would be identical, regardless of the personnel handling the request.

Yet that is not what has happened here. Thus, should you use this "no reasonable interval has elapsed" argument in relation to future requests from myself, I will be only too happy to seek clarification on this point from the Information Commissioner (after exhausting the University's FOI complaints procedure).

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Beckles

[1] http://www.opsi.gov.uk/Acts/acts2000/en/...

[2] See, for example, paragraph 18 of the following Decision Notice:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/d...