Dear Michael Edwards

Thank you for your request which has been assigned reference FOI/10

CEO absence

If you have submitted a request under the Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) or the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), we will aim to
respond within the statutory timescale of 20 working days, i.e. by or on
%%duedate%%. If you have submitted a Subject Access Request your request
will be considered and you will receive our response within the statutory
timescale of one calendar month.

Should you have any further inquiries concerning this matter, please reply
to this email leaving the subject line unchanged.

Yours sincerely,
West Sussex County Council

Dear Mr Edwards,

Our Ref: FOI/00000010

On 28th September 2019 you made the following request for information,
which has been dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom
of Information Act 2000.

We have now completed a search for the information which you requested and
I confirm the Authority holds information relevant to the request; please
find our response to your enquiries below:

Please could you provide the details of the costs involved in the office
move of the Chief Executive and other officers that commenced in September
2019?

With the Chief Executive not in the office at present the proposed move of
senior management into the 1st floor west wing of County Hall has been
cancelled. It has been decided to turn this area into a hot desking area
to increase capacity on campus.

Please could you supply the planned costs for the creation of the new
office space and the redesign of the Chief Executive and other officer's
current spaces?
Please could you also supply the actual costs of the move?
For clarity the definition of costs would include but not be limited to
staff costs for design, staff costs of construction, contracted
providers/services, materials, equipment, office furniture, furnishings
and decoration.

The cost of the work undertaken to date is £24,346.54 (£7,184.54 in
consultancy fees and £17,162 in building costs) 

Please could you also confirm who authorised the expenditure for the
office move, the date of approval and which councillors if any were
involved in the decision?

Authority to spend was signed off by Head of Transformation Programme
Office (TPO) on the 23/08/2019 with approval for a single tender by
Executive Director for Resources on 04/09/19.
No councillors were involved in this decision.

Please could you also forward any copies of analysis such as cost-benefit
and time and motion, that were used in the decision to authorise an office
move?

Following a search of our paper and electronic records, I have established
that the information you requested in respect of this part of the request
is not held by this Authority.

Please could you also confirm where the funding for this office move came
from? Which budget was used and was this budgeted at the start of the
financial year or does it reflect an additional in-year cost?

The funding for the office move was met through the Chief Executives
budget, where funds were available for the project.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most
documents supplied by us will be copyright of West Sussex County Council.

Information you receive which is not subject to WSCC continues to be
protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the
information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission
before reproducing any third party (non WSCC) information.

If you have any queries about any of this information please contact me
 by responding to this email. Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may
wish to ask for a review of our decision  by responding to this email.
Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal
review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

[1]www.ico.org.uk; or

The Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

Property FOI

References

Visible links
1. http://www.ico.org.uk/

Dear Mr Edwards,

Our Ref: FOI/00000010

Following on from our response to you on Friday 25th October 2019, we have
been provided with an update to the answer we provided to one of your
questions.  

Please see our updated response to the question below:

Please could you also forward any copies of analysis such as cost-benefit
and time and motion, that were used in the decision to authorise an office
move?

In this instance neither a cost-benefit or time and motion analysis was
undertaken.  The purpose of the move was to co-locate the Executive Team
together to facilitate working as one team on a day to day basis and allow
the team to more effectively share executive support and move towards a
more collaborative way of working.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most
documents supplied by us will be copyright of West Sussex County Council.

Information you receive which is not subject to WSCC continues to be
protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the
information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission
before reproducing any third party (non WSCC) information.

If you have any queries about any of this information please contact me 
by responding to this email. Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may
wish to ask for a review of our decision  by responding to this email.
Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal
review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

[1]www.ico.org.uk; or

The Information Commissioner's Office,
 Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

Property FOI

References

Visible links
1. http://www.ico.org.uk/

Dear Mr Edwards,

Thank you for your email of yesterday which read;

' Dear West Sussex County Council,

One week ago i emailed you to ask for a response to the questions that i
had asked in my original request that you failed to answer. Please could
you answer these questions as its now beyond the FOI response time frame.

Yours faithfully,

Michael Edwards

The reply is currently being compiled and I will ask the responding
officer to update you directly.

Kindest regards,

Kerry Rickman

FOI CRT Officer

Dear Mr Edwards,

Our Ref: FOI/00000010

Thank you for your email in regard to our response of 28^th October 2019
in relation to your Freedom of Information request.

Please find our response to your raised inquiries below:

Please could you supply the planned costs for the creation of the new
office space and the redesign of the Chief Executive and other officer’s
current spaces?

You have provided the actual costs incurred to date but not what the
planned costs were. Please could you provide this as requested?

The planned and actual expenditure was the figure as provided within our
response, the costs came in exactly on budget. No additional expenditure
was incurred in creating the hot desks as we had existing furniture in
stock.

I also asked whether the cost of the office move was allocated into the
budget at the start of the financial year or if it was an additional
expenditure decided in year. Please could you answer this as requested?

This was spend from a discretionary budget, so while it was not planned,
it was not 'new' money.

In respect of the final inquiry raised below, this is being treated as a
new request and as such the deadline for this will be 26/11/2019, albeit
we intend to provide this further information earlier than this date.

In your response you have stated that £7,184.54 of the costs incurred to
date was for consultancy fees. Please could you provide details of these
consultancy fees with details of payments to individuals or individual
organisations and what services were undertaken or supplied.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most
documents supplied by us will be copyright of West Sussex County Council.

Information you receive which is not subject to WSCC continues to be
protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the
information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission
before reproducing any third party (non WSCC) information.

If you have any queries about any of this information please contact me by
responding to this email. Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may
wish to ask for a review of our decision by responding to this email.
Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal
review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

[1]www.ico.org.uk; or

The Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

Property FOI

References

Visible links
1. http://www.ico.org.uk/

Dear Mr Edwards,

Our Ref: FOI/00000010

On 29th October 2019 you responded to our initial response of the 28th
October 2019 and at that time requested additional information, which has
been dealt with in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.

We have now completed a search for the information which you requested and
I confirm the Authority holds information relevant to the request; please
find our response to your inquiry below:

In your response you have stated that £7,184.54 of the costs incurred to
date was for consultancy fees. Please could you provide details of these
consultancy fees with details of payments to individuals or individual
organisations and what services were undertaken or supplied.

The consultancy fees were paid to our consultants Faithful and Gould for
the services of project design, writing tender documentation, ensuring
building regulations were conformed to, issuing tender documentation,
analysis of costs and responsibilities under CDM Regulations.

The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your
own purposes, including any non-commercial research you are doing and for
the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for example commercial
publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder. Most
documents supplied by us will be copyright of West Sussex County Council.

Information you receive which is not subject to WSCC continues to be
protected by the copyright of the person, or organisation, from which the
information originated. You must ensure that you gain their permission
before reproducing any third party (non WSCC) information.

If you have any queries about any of this information please contact me by
responding to this email. Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may
wish to ask for a review of our decision by responding to this email.
Please do not amend the Subject line.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally,
the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal
review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

www.ico.org.uk ; or

The Information Commissioner''s Office,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

Yours sincerely,

Property FOI

This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for
the persons addressed. If it has come to you in error please reply to
advise us but you should not read it, copy it, show it to anyone else nor
make any other use of its content. West Sussex County Council takes steps
to ensure emails and attachments are virus-free but you should carry out
your own checks before opening any attachment.