Dear Worcester City Council,

I am interested in who owns and manages the land commonly known as Pitchcroft Race Course.

I would be grateful if you could assist me as to what documents are available and the provision of documents on
1 The ownership structure, length and terms of agreements, meetings etc
2 The physical boundaries of who owns and manages what in digital form
3 Any agreements with other clubs or entities, their duration and terms

Yours faithfully,

Brian Welsh

Dear unnamed Business Support Assistant, Legal and Democratic Services,

Thank you for your reply and the information provided. However I restate my original request below and please could you assist me as to what documents are available

"I would be grateful if you could assist me as to what documents are available and the provision of documents on:
1 The ownership structure, length and terms of agreements, meetings etc
2 The physical boundaries of who owns and manages what in digital form
3 Any agreements with other clubs or entities, their duration and terms"

Yours faithfully,

Brian Welsh

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

Dear Fiona,
Thank you for your reply, I await the response and my apologies for my mistake in not noticing your name in my previous response

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

Dear Fiona,

Unless the council reply within 48 hours I will have no option but to ask for an internal review as you have failed to comply with the law in replying to this request

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

Dear Worcester City Council,

Please pass to Communications Team, Worcester City Council, FREEPOST WR427, Worcester, WR1 2ZD.

Your Ref: FOI/5279343
My ref FOI/5271111 Please quote in replies

Following my reasonable and lawful request for information, that I am entitled to under the Freedom of Information Acts, Worcester City Council has failed in its legal duty to provide the information I asked for.

Please bear in mind your duty to the taxpayers and public and your duty to assist me under section 16 of FOI Act 2000.
ie 16 Duty to provide advice and assistance.
(1)It shall be the duty of a public authority to provide advice and assistance...

As per my original request I would be grateful if you could assist me as to what documents [electronic or otherwise including any data] are available and the provision of documents on
1 The ownership structure, length and terms of agreements, meetings etc
2 The physical boundaries of who owns and manages what in digital form
3 Any agreements with other clubs or entities, their duration and term

I am writing to request an internal review of Worcester City Council's handling of my FOI request 'Ownership and Management of Pitchcroft', Worcester.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ow...

Yours faithfully,

Brian Welsh

Dear Lesley
Freedom of Information Team
Legal and Democratic Services

I can confirm that no such email has been received.
Please could you
1 Send the proof of sending of the email so that the website can check its files and review its procedures if necessary
2 Resend the email and the documents and so I can judge whether or not to withdraw the request for an Internal Review

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

Worcester City Council
Please pass to Communications Team, Worcester City Council,
FREEPOST WR427, Worcester, WR1 2ZD.

I can confirm that the FOI website has now received your 5 emails with 8 attachments.
I note that these were not provided in answer to the original request.
I note also that the FOI website www.whatdotheyknow.com did not receive your email that you claim was sent on 23rd January 2013 nor did you respond to my request to provide proof when it was indeed sentso that it could be more easily looked for.
I can also confirm that I am asking for this request to proceed to an internal review.

I repeat the original Freedom of Information request request here
“I am interested in who owns and manages the land commonly known as Pitchcroft Race Course.
I would be grateful if you could assist me as to what documents are available and the provision of documents on
1 The ownership structure, length and terms of agreements, meetings etc
2 The physical boundaries of who owns and manages what in digital form
3 Any agreements with other clubs or entities, their duration and terms"

I note that in your reply of 30 January you gave a scant reply, with no assistance whatsoever, despite assistance being asked for in the very request itself as well as it being your your duty under Section 16.
I note that nearly 11 weeks after my original request, and after being asked for an internal review, in your reply dated “22 January” you have provided some documents relating to agreements with other clubs or entities.

It is interesting that in this reply you refuse a request asking for assistance as to what documents are available, on the basis, under section 12 “.. it will take us in excess of the applicable time limit to determine the appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract the information in respect of meetings to respond to your request”. Further you state that I may wish to refine my request by narrowing its scope by being more specific about what information I wish to obtain in respect of meetings.
This is of course impossible as you have deliberately put me in a situation of not having any information by which I can narrow the request, as you have given me no advice as to what meetings took place, between who or when.
Nor have you provided basic information on the ownership and management structure such as any agreement with Arena Leisure or any entities of similar name.
Nor have you provided any agreements with angling clubs.
I note also that whilst it may be in keeping with the FOI Act to refer me to the Land registry website where each individual has to pay for the information it is not transparent for the Council Tax payers nor citizens of Worcester and I request that the Council publishes the information as a reply to this request, and similarly request the council to acquire the site plans in digital format and make these available for the sake of transparency.

As it has become quite obvious that you are attempting to obfuscate and delay then I would suggest that you look at the whole request again and answer in a spirit of honesty and transparency bearing in mind all the comments above and the councils duty to act according to the seven Nolan principles of public life: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership as well as bearing in mind that the job of the local council is to represent the interests of the whole community.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address:
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/ow...

Yours faithfully,

Brian Welsh

Dear Lesley FOI Worcester City Council
In your email of 7th Feb, you stated that I should receive a reply to my request for internal review by 4th March.
It is now 6th March and there is no reply.
Please could you state what the delay is, whether the internal review has been finished, and even whether the internal review was started.
I suggest that in line with others an acceptable timeframe for this is 48 hours.

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

To Tim O'Gara FOIA
request 02/1/2012 Your ref FOI/5279343 Internal Review

I was pleasantly surprised that the Internal Review process proved not to be a total whitewash and for that I commend you and the Council.

However my comments are as follows

1. There was no internal review of anything other than the original request and response – please explain why. You only reviewed the “original request and reply” of 2nd November, and failed to review the fact that no substantive reply whatsoever was made to my request for further detail on 7 Dec 2012, despite an acknowledgement from the Council on 13th December, I would like a reason for this.

Furthermore I had to make further representations to the Council on 21st January, nearly 2 months after the original request, to remind you that no response had been forthcoming and that I would be forced to ask for a reply within 48 hours on 21st Jan 2013 to proceed to Internal Review.

Even then I received no reply. Why was this ignored in the Internal Review? Why was the reason for this not investigated, whether it was not sent or lost in the ether due to too big an attachment?

Furthermore, although you state that you apologise for the slight delay (days) in replying for Internal Review, the fact remains that by this delay you broke the law, and in my experience, and I think I can speak for most people, then authority is not so forgiving if the public break the law or miss a deadline by a few days.

2.Whilst you are undoubtedly correct in your legal interpretation of section 21 of the Act, there are several things to consider in whether it is readily available or not

Is the information actually readily available from the Land Registry?
Has the Council actually tried to get a map of the site in digital form from the site? For you to know it is available, you need to check which you clearly did not do in this case, as it was not. If you are going to pay to check then it would appear that it would be better just to provide the information yourselves.

The fee may be small to a lawyer, it is not small to the poor, especially when there are several parts that need paying for, and it turns out that part of the information is not there (the expenses for which the council has liability for if it clearly but erroneously states that the information was available from that site).
The requirement of credit cards and access to computers may well indeed be restrictive to a sector of the population and this should be taken into account when judgement is made as to whether the information is “readily available elsewhere”.

Even assuming for this sake of this point, that you may be legally correct about Section 21 and it is readily available elsewhere, and the narrow, legal, view that the Council need not provide the information, then it may well not be conducive to good relationships with citizens and the public.
Many members of the public may have to pay to get the information on a particular property, and the Land Registry Enquiries stay private, rather than the Council provide information publicly about a property.

A property that, after all, is held on behalf of the public, and the public are being told by a Council public servant to go elsewhere for the information. It tends to leave a bad taste, a feeling of being cheated not one that cultivates a feeling of cooperation.

3. The difference between information requested in what you refer to as a) and b) was that in a) I wanted the any written details and b) map details

4. Although you state the council does not hold the map information in digital form, it appeared to be held in non digital form. Whilst there may have been some confusion about the definition of digital, in this case it was meant as being able to be provided to be shown on this site. Also I believe it is the duty of the council to provide it in digital form rather than just stating it is not available in that form, when it is actually held. Finally I acknowledge that a map was eventually provided.

5. Whilst I thank you for clarifying to some extent what information is available, I still have not been provided with any information on what meetings there have been, which I have asked for and which would be extremely useful. I have no idea the committees that have met, nor how often, nor even how many there are 2 or 200. Thus I feel failed by the responses and the internal review. Surely it would have only taken a few minutes to scan or scope the electronic data to find this out. The basic problem is that requesters often have nothing to grasp to be able to narrow their request if we do not know subject matters/headings.

6. It was answered early on that the council have some relationship with Worcester Racecourse limited. However any relationship with Arena Leisure or similar was said not to be held by the Council. Are the Council really pretending that they do not know the relationship and cannot help in a spirit of transparency according to the Nolan principles, whether written down or not, and has the matter never been written down in some way. How can you be so sure that the information is not held? Are the Council 100% sure that Companies House will hold this information?

I would be interested in your comments

Regards

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

Dear FOI,

Please could you reply to my letter of 13th April, under the FOI advice and assistance section 16 FOI 2000

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh

Dear Julie Slatter,

I note your response which naturally avoids answering most of the points properly.
I also note your threat to instruct officers to no longer process my requests in respect of Pitchcroft/racecourse as the statutory limit will be exceeded. This appears to show a remarkable degree of foresight in knowing what questions I will ask and when.
It is remarkable how a little bit of power goes to some peoples heads.
In view of this unwarranted threat please could you detail how long each question took to answer and how much of the limit is presently left as of today.
It could appear to an independent observer that the Council appears to have something to hide about Pitchcroft/Racecourse, judging by the unhelpful attitude of senior staff and not answering the perfectly reasonable questions put.

Yours sincerely,

Brian Welsh