Our Ref: 3021507

15-DEC-09

Dear Ms Ward,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT - REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

I acknowledge your request for information received today.

Your request is being considered and if the information requested is held
by the County Council it will be sent to you within the statutory
timescale of 20 working days as defined by the Freedom of Information Act
2000, subject to the information not being exempt or containing a
reference to a third party.

If appropriate, the information will be provided in paper copy, normal
font size. If you require alternative formats, e.g. language, audio,
large print, etc. then please let me know.

For your information, the Act defines a number of exemptions that may
prevent release of the information you have requested. There will be an
assessment and if any of the exemption categories apply then the exempt
information will not be released. You will be informed if this is the
case, including your rights of appeal.

If the information you request contains reference to a third party then
they may be consulted prior to a decision being taken on whether or not to
release the information to you.

There may a fee payable for this information to cover photocopying,
postage and any other production costs. This will be considered and you
will be informed if a fee is payable. In this event the fee must be paid
before the information is processed and released. The 20 working day time
limit for responses is suspended until receipt of the payment.

In line with the Information Commissioner's directive on the disclosure of
information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 your request will
form part of our disclosure log. Therefore, a version of our response
which will protect your anonymity will be posted on Durham County Council
website.

If you have any queries or concerns then please contact:

Kevin Bell

Freedom of Information / Data Protection Coordinator

Durham County Council

Assistant Chief Executive's Office

Rivergreen Centre

Aykley Heads

Durham

DH1 5TS

Tel: 0191 370 8803

Email: [Durham County Council request email]

Further information is also available from the Information Commissioner
at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Telephone: 01625 545 745

Fax: 01625 524 510

Email: [email address]

www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

Yours sincerely,

Neale Boswell

Freedom of Information Team

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Dear Ms Ward,

On behalf of Durham County Council, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your freedom of information request. Following your email, I have contacted the ICT team in our Corporate Resources service and asked them to provide a response as soon as possible.

I have since received an update from them and hopefully, we'll have a response to send you by the end of the week.

Regards,

Neale Boswell
Freedom of Information Team

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Dear Ms Ward,

I do apologise for the continuing delay and will make further enquiries with our ICT team about getting a response out to you. I can tell you that I've stressed that your request is now long overdue and will do so again.

Regards,

Neale Boswell
Freedom of Information Team

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Our Ref: 3021507

17-FEB-10

Dear Ms Ward,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT - REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Once again, please accept our apologies for the late response to your
request for information on the list of costs and supplied clients by
durhamnet, received on 15-DEC-2009 and which has finally been considered.

You requested: I wish to know the list of clients of the durhamnet
networks, the bandwidth allocation and current costs for each client. I am
doing research into North East School, government and business
connectivity costs and options for my MSc. I would appreciate if you could
supply postcodes for each client so I can calculate what bearing distance
has on the costs to each client.

Our response:

1. A total of the number of clients

Internal/Council Sites: 1083

Durham Schools: 286

External Clients: 121

Total Clients: 1490

2. A total of the bandwidth allocation

Libraries (44 x 10Mbps = 440Mbps)

Offices (150 x 10Mbps = 1500Mbps)

Leisure (18 x 10Mbps = 180Mbps)

SureStarts (40 x 10Mbps = 400Mbps)

Connexions (5 x 10Mbps = 50Mbps)

Social Services (25 x 10Mbps = 250Mbps)

Other Sites (20 x 10Mbps + 20 x 100Mbps = 2200Mbps)

Total: 5020Mbps across 322 sites (+ schools)

3. A total of the costs charged to the clients

£8874334.89

4. An expression of the geographical spread of DurhamNet clients

North, South, East, West = Berwick, Barnard Castle, Seaham, Wearhead.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request please contact:

Freedom of Information / Data Protection Coordinator

Durham County Council

Assistant Chief Executive's Office

Room 4/10

County Hall

Durham

DH1 5UF

Tel: 0191 383 3815

Email: [1][Durham County Council request email]

After you have exhausted our internal appeals procedure you also have a
right of appeal to the Information Commissioner at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Telephone: 01625 545 745

Fax: 01625 524 510

Email: [2][email address]

Most of the documents that we provide in response to Freedom of
Information Act requests will be subject to copyright protection. In most
cases the copyright will be owned by Durham County Council. The copyright
in other documents may be owned by another person or organisation, as
indicated on the documents themselves.

You are free to use any documents supplied for your own use, including for
non-commercial research purposes. The documents may also be used for the
purposes of news reporting. However, any other type of re-use, for
example, by publishing the documents or issuing copies to the public will
require the permission of the copyright owner.

For documents where the copyright is owned by Durham County Council,
please contact me for details of the conditions on re-use.

For documents where the copyright is owned by another person or
organisation, you would need to apply to the copyright owner to obtain
their permission.

Yours sincerely,

Neale Boswell

Freedom of Information Team

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Dear Ms Ward

I do apologise that you have had a delayed response to your Freedom of Information request.

I have looked into the handling of your request and have found the following:

15 December 2009 - Your request was received by Durham County Council and acknowledged the same day.
16 December 2009 - Your request was passed to the appropriate service area.
15 January 2010 - The Improvement in Performance Group escalation rep was notified that your request was overdue as of that date (15 January 2010).
05 February 2010 - Your request was highlighted as being overdue at the Departmental Management Team Meeting.
09 February 2010 - You emailed chasing up a response to your request.
10 February 2010 - We chased up with the service area rep who then chased up with the service area staff.
10 February 2010 - We emailed you apologising for the delay and informing you that we expected to have a response ready by the end of the week.
12 February 2010 - We requested clearance from the Head of Service to send the response.
16 February 2010 - You emailed us asking for an update and we contacted the Head of Service to repeat our request for disclosure.
16 February 2010 - We replied to your email and again apologised for the delayed response and said that we were chasing the request up with the ICT team.
17 February 2010 - We received clearance and sent our response to you.
17 February 2010 - You emailed to say that you had requested more detailed information than we had supplied.
22 February 2010 - Internal review commenced.

Looking at the event log above, it is clear that we have exceeded the required timescale for a response to your request. Once again, I sincerely apologise for this delay which has been caused, in part, by the re-organisation of the ICT department following Local Government Reorganisation. We have put into place Escalation Representatives who will actively chase up any FoI requests which are approaching the 20-day deadline.

In respect of your request for more detailed information, I can only apologise again that our response was not sufficiently detailed. We should have explained that we would be unable to provide information relating to individual customers as this information is regarded as commercially confidential under s43(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), "(2) Information is exempt information if its disclosure under this Act would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it)." The detailed information you requested, postcode, list of clients and actual costs of broadband supply, is clearly commercially sensitive and disclosure of this information would be highly prejudicial to the continuing service we provide. Once information is disclosed under Freedom of Information regulations, it is in the public domain and available to any other company who might wish to then approach our customers and offer broadband service at a lower rate. This would self-evidently be against the commercial interests of Durham County Council and we therefore rely on the protection of s43(2) FOIA.

I hope this email has addressed your concerns and regret that we cannot supply the information to the level of detail you have requested.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request please contact:
Freedom of Information Officer
Durham County Council
Assistant Chief Executive's Office
Room 4/10
County Hall
Durham
DH1 5UF
Tel: 0191 383 3815Fax: 0191 370 8897
Email: [Durham County Council request email]

After you have exhausted our internal appeals procedure you also have a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner at:
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Telephone: 01625 545 745
Fax: 01625 524 510
Email: [email address]

Your faithfully,

Kevin Bell
Freedom of Information Officer
Durham County Council
Room 4/10
County Hall

Tel: (0191) 383 3342

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Dear Nicole,

Thank you for the email. I hope I can help. There appears to be some confusion around the request and what we can provide. I am trying to understand what you want us to provide when you ask for "generalising the area a bit more or distance from the exchange"

Rather than exchanging emails to refine the request, it may be easiest to do it by telephone so we can resolve the request to your satisfaction.

If you would like to discuss this by telephone, I can be reached on 0191-383-3815.

Yours sincerely,

Lawrence Serewicz

Principal Information Management Officer
Durham County Council
County Hall
County Durham
DH1 5UF

0191-383-3815

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Dear Nicole Ward,

Thank you for your email. My apologies for the slight delay.

In response to your question, we do not charge by distance. The service charges are based in large part around volume.

As I mentioned in my previous email, if you have any more questions, please telephone me as we appear to be moving into a new request. If I can offer any further advice and assistance please let me know.

Yours faithfully,

Lawrence Serewicz

Principal Information Management Officer
Durham County Council
County Hall
County Durham
DH1 5UF

0191-383-3815

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