Parking ticket PCN No CF5012849A Appeal No CF05087F

The request was partially successful.

Dear Chelmsford Borough Council,

I request the following information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 'The Act'.

In order to assist you with this request, I am outlining my query as specifically as possible. As you will understand, this may not be a definitive list of relevant information so if you are aware of any relevant omissions to the request please respond accordingly. If you need further clarification of any point please contact me through the www.whatdotheyknow.com website.

I would like the full costs to the council of pursuing PCN No CF5012849A (9th June) through to appeal (Appeal heard Dec 1st No CF05087F) supplied - detailing the following:

officer time (in hours or part)
chargeout rate (including on-costs) per hour against each officer
charges (for example postage & packing, printing, computer/email charges, etc)
expenses (for example attendance at meetings, travel and subsistence)

(where the identity of officers are known these are indicated. Where they are not specified please indicate at least an id number and/or job title if you are not prepared to release the full name)

under the following headings:

Initial enforcement action
Responses to informal representations
Responses to complaints
Phone calls and telephone messages
FOI requests
Meeting of 16th August
Communication to DVLA
Notice to Owner
Notice of Rejection
Maladministration complaint
Preparation of evidence for appeal
Appeal hearing

Listing costs against each of individuals identified:

Steve Packham
Averil Price
Nick Binder
Annette Taylor
Jane Howard
Cheryl Blake
Lillie Oliver
Meic Sullivan-Gould
J H Wyatt
Jill Firth
Parking Officer/CEO
Other officers

Yours faithfully,

Mr Everett

Dear Chelmsford Borough Council,

Please will you undertake an internal review into the delay to my request 'Parking ticket PCN No CF5012849A Appeal No CF05087F' which has not been processed within the time limit.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Everett

REYNOLDS, Jane, Chelmsford City Council

Dear Mr Everett

I have been handed your request for a review on the above matter and note
as follows:

Your original request was made on 2^nd of December 2010 so we are
obviously out of time in terms of reply and we need to apologise to you
for this. The reason for the delay was due to the fact that your request
paperwork unfortunately got displaced following substantial flooding and
disruption to the Council Building late December 2010 and early January
2011. This resulted in the FOI and legal services being moved out. We were
alerted to the delay in replying to you by your recent request for a
review of our failure to reply which we received on 16^th January 2011.

On locating and checking the paperwork an initial response had been
drafted on 10^th December 2010 and was not sent. I have reviewed this
response again and have asked the officer dealing with it to provide some
further information.

Once again please accept our apologies for the delay and I hope to have a
reply with you in the next 7 to 14 days.

Yours sincerely

Jane Reynolds

Legal and Democratic Services Manger

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Dear REYNOLDS, Jane,

As you will be aware this request is the subject of an internal review request. While I appreciate your issues with your flooding of your accommodation you did undertake to reply within 14 days of your last communication. This has not been achieved. I am minded to take this to the information commissioner but would like to give you a final opportunity to respond as you promised.

I reiterate my earlier request for an internal review timescales to take place from the original request date.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Everett

REYNOLDS, Jane, Chelmsford City Council

Dear Mr Everett

Thank you for your email. I have not yet heard back from the Officers in
order to reply to you.

I realise that this is not acceptable and I will chase this matter
again.

Until I receive the information I need I am not in a position to under
the review.

Yours sincerely

Jane Reynolds

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FOI Mailbox, Chelmsford City Council

1 Attachment

CBC FOI REFERENCE NO. 1112

Dear Mr. Everett,

With reference to your Freedom of Information request please see attached
response.

Yours faithfully
Legal and Democratic Services Manager
Corporate Services
Chelmsford Borough Council
[1]www.chelmsford.gov.uk
Accredited with the IiP Gold Standard

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Dear Legal and Democratic Services Manager

Thank you for supplying the limited information so far to my information request of 2nd December 2010. Unfortunately you have not supplied all of the information requested which was:

I would like the full costs to the council of pursuing PCN No CF5012849A (9th June) through to appeal (Appeal heard Dec 1st No CF05087F) supplied - detailing the following:

officer time (in hours or part)
chargeout rate (including on-costs) per hour against each officer
charges (for example postage & packing, printing, computer/email
charges, etc)
expenses (for example attendance at meetings, travel and
subsistence)

(where the identity of officers are known these are indicated.
Where they are not specified please indicate at least an id number
and/or job title if you are not prepared to release the full name)

under the following headings:

Initial enforcement action
Responses to informal representations
Responses to complaints
Phone calls and telephone messages
FOI requests
Meeting of 16th August
Communication to DVLA
Notice to Owner
Notice of Rejection
Maladministration complaint
Preparation of evidence for appeal
Appeal hearing

Listing costs against each of individuals identified:

Steve Packham
Averil Price
Nick Binder
Annette Taylor
Jane Howard
Cheryl Blake
Lillie Oliver
Meic Sullivan-Gould
J H Wyatt
Jill Firth
Parking Officer/CEO
Other officers

You will note that the request asked for the “full costs…of pursuing…through to appeal”. It did not request the “increased … estimated expenditure on the overall budget” as detailed in the response.

Specifically:

The charge rate for Mike Sullivan-Gould was not supplied

The amount of time each officer took on the case was not supplied or even estimated.

It does not give the cost of producing letters (postage and packing), printing costs (per page) etc. Charge out of computerised systems usage (usually charged out at a rate per hour including and technical expertise, support, and energy costs). This would include a notional cost per email and/or per transaction.

It does not list travel and subsistence costs defrayed

It does not supply the cost of meeting room usage

Preparation of evidence costs are not listed

Legal advice sought is not costed.

On costs of appeals of parking enforcement operation (this might be expressed as a total cost annually divided by the number of cases taken to appeal).

I therefore conclude that the council is refusing to answer my full request for information. It has also not complied with the regulations for the internal review. As such if I do not receive the full information requested within a further 7 working days I will be pursuing both these issues with the information commissioners office.

Yours sincerely,

Mr Everett

FOI Mailbox, Chelmsford City Council

Dear Mr. Everett,

I acknowledge receipt of your e-mail dated 12th. February, 2011, the
contents of which has been duly noted.

Your request is being processed and a response will be available within
7 days.

Yours faithfully,
For the Legal and Democratic Services Manager
Corporate Services
Chelmsford Borough Council
www.chelmsford.gov.uk
Accredited with the IiP Gold Standard

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FOI Mailbox, Chelmsford City Council

Dear Mr. Everett,

With reference to your e-mail of the 12^th. February, 2011.

Please see the response below to the points raised.

Regarding Mr. Mike Sullivan-Gould, he was a temporary interim legal
manager and left the Council back at the end of September, 2010. He left
no records of any time he may have spent on this matter. Therefore, no
costs can be given.

1: The amount of time each officer took on the case was not supplied

or even estimated.

As detailed in the initial response;

Â*The operation does not account or log information for case officer
time spent on each individual case, this would create unnecessary
administration time and serve no purpose to the operation. The reporting
information held on each case officer relates to amounts of processing
functions achieved and is used for staff performance monitoringÂ*.

Therefore as this information is not logged we cannot give an accurate
account for the full costs for processing this individual case. Providing
an estimate would be inaccurate and an estimate was not asked for in the
initial FOI request. Any estimated information would not reflect the true
full cost of processing this case and therefore we would prefer not to
second guess this information.

2: It does not give the cost of producing letters (postage and

packing), printing costs (per page) etc. Charge out of computerised

systems usage (usually charged out at a rate per hour including and

technical expertise, support, and energy costs). This would include

a notional cost per email and/or per transaction.

All IT system associated costs and internal stationary and post costs are
shared between the on-street and off- street enforcement budgets allocated
via the internal service management overhead recharges. These costs can
be calculated on an average per PCN issued, but the true cost will not be
known until the end of the current financial year.

3: It does not list travel and subsistence costs defrayed

The cost incurred for attending the adjudication hearing in London was
£18.00

In return rail fares

4: It does not supply the cost of meeting room usage

Meeting rooms are not charge to individual organisers of meetings. This
cost is included in the Facility Management service management overhead
charge which includes all building related costs.

5: Preparation of evidence costs are not listed

As per answer to Q1

6: Legal advice sought is not costed.

Legal advice was obtained by Chelmsford BC legal team and a max of 1 hour
was spend to confirm all legal procedures by the enforcement authority
had been adhered to. Cost : £35.06

On costs of appeals of parking enforcement operation (this might be

expressed as a total cost annually divided by the number of cases

taken to appeal).

As detailed in initial response;

Â*An annual cost is submitted to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, this cost
is set dependant on the amount of penalty charge notices a local authority
issues and not the amount of people who appear at an adjudication.
Therefore there was no extra charge for Mr EverettÂ*s appealÂ*.

Therefore there is not a cost associated to an individual case. This cost
is compulsory and therefore works out at £0.32p per PCN issued

I therefore conclude that the council is refusing to answer my full

request for information. It has also not complied with the

regulations for the internal review. As such if I do not receive

the full information requested within a further 7 working days I

will be pursuing both these issues with the information

commissioners office.

In our opinion this is not a case of the council refusing to answer the
request. The Council can only provide information that is logged and
stored. In this case the Council has explained why individual time data
for each case is not collected. The council process in the region of
15,500 penalty charge notice per year and logging exact time allocation
for each PCN serves no valid purpose to the operation and would introduce
a costly and time consuming process to capture this information.

To estimate the information would be inaccurate and the Council is obliged
to submit accurate information. Therefore the information submitted is the
information the Council has available.

At the end of this financial year the Council can supply you with a true
cost of total enforcement expenditure divided by the amount of PCNÂ*s
issued and this will produce the average cost of processing a single PCN
and an estimated average time of processing a PCN.

Yours faithfully

Legal and Democratic Services Manager

Corporate Services

Chelmsford Borough Council

[1]www.chelmsford.gov.uk

Accredited with the liP Gold Standard

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