Planning Enforcement Enquiry Procedures

The request was refused by City of York Council.

Matthew Laverack

Dear City of York Council,

Please provide the details of all Enforcement investigations in the last five years where Council officers have sought out evidence to try to show that an "established use" has been created which is contrary to the planning policies and objectives of the Council.

Please give all addresses and identify the alleged breaches of planning control.

Please identify the "established use" in each case which the enforcement officer is trying to substantiate.

Please explain in each case why Council officers would wish to expend taxpayer funded resources to prove something the Council does not support under its planning policies.

Yours faithfully,

Matthew Laverack

foi@york.gov.uk, City of York Council

Thank you for your enquiry. We will ensure your enquiry is passed to the relevant service(s) and you will receive a response within 20 working days. We will contact you if we have any queries, need clarification of your enquiry or to let you know if we need more time to fully answer your enquiry.

Customer Feedback Team
City of York Council
West Offices
Station Rise
YORK
YO1 6GA

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Robinson, Kay, City of York Council

1 Attachment

 
 
Please see attached the response to your enquiry under the Freedom of
Information Act.
 
 
 
Kay Robinson | Complaints & Information Officer
t: 01904 554081 | e: [1][email address]
 
City of York Council  | Complaints Team, Customer & Business Support
Services
  West Offices, Station Rise, YO1 6GA
[2]www.york.gov.uk | [3]facebook.com/cityofyork | [4]@CityofYork
 
 
 
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Dear Robinson, Kay,

Your response is unacceptable.

It will not take more than 18 hours because it is highly likely that there is only one case like this - one I have experienced at 1Skeldergate/9 Bridge Street.

I will make it easier for you. Instead of in the last five years we will amend the FOI request to be since the present Enforcement Team Leader Mr Matthew Parkinson has been in post. This senior officer must be able to recall any such cases under his watch. It will not take him 18 hours.

If he cannot produce such an example with full details of addresses and case numbers I require this to be confirmed by you in your response.

Yours sincerely,

Matthew Laverack

Robinson, Kay, City of York Council

1 Attachment

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Kay Robinson | Complaints & Information Officer
t: 01904 554081 | e: [1][email address]
 
City of York Council  | Complaints Team, Customer & Business Support
Services
  West Offices, Station Rise, YO1 6GA
[2]www.york.gov.uk | [3]facebook.com/cityofyork | [4]@CityofYork
 
 
 
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foi@york.gov.uk, City of York Council

1 Attachment

I don’t think the email below was delivered to you, therefore I am
resending.
 
 
 
 
Kay Robinson | Complaints & Information Officer
t: 01904 554081 | e: [1][email address]
 
City of York Council  | Complaints Team, Customer & Business Support
Services
  West Offices, Station Rise, YO1 6GA
[2]www.york.gov.uk | [3]facebook.com/cityofyork | [4]@CityofYork
 
 
 
 

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Dear City of York Council,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of City of York Council's handling of my FOI request 'Planning Enforcement Enquiry Procedures'.

It will NOT take more than 18 hours to deal with this enquiry.
It is likely to take less than 18 minutes.
Why? Because other than one extraordinary case I suffered at 1 Skeldergate/Bridge Street earlier this year there will be no other examples of such conduct.

The head of enforcement must be able to easily recall any case which would fall into this category because it is so contrary to government planning advice and the code of conduct for enforcement investigations.

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

Yours faithfully,

Matthew Laverack

foi@york.gov.uk, City of York Council

Thank you for your enquiry. We will ensure it is passed to the relevant service(s) and you will receive a response within 20 working days. We will contact you if we have any queries, need clarification or to let you know if we need more time to answer your enquiry in full.

However, if you are contacting us to ask for a review of a previous FOI response from us, we will pass your request to Veritau/Information Governance who will contact you about this.

Please note this is an automatically generated receipt to let you know we have received your email.

Regards
Customer Feedback Team

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foi@york.gov.uk, City of York Council

Dear Mr Laverack

re: CF4517

I have passed your request for a review to the relevant team. You should receive
a response by 17th December 2013.

City of York Council | Complaints Team, Customer & Business Support Services
West Offices, Station Rise, YO1 6GA
www.york.gov.uk | facebook.com/cityofyork | @CityofYork

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information.governance@york.gov.uk, City of York Council

Dear Mr Laverack
 
I write in relation to your request for a review of the response to your
request CF4517. You have challenged the application of section 12.
 
Section 12 of the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 states that the
Council is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the
authority estimates that the costs of complying with the request would
exceed the appropriate limit. The Freedom of Information and Data
Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 has set the
appropriate limit as £450, based on a charge at £25 per hour.
 
The appropriate limit equates to one person spending 18 hours on the
following actions:

* determining whether the Council holds the information requested, and
* locating, retrieving and extracting the information requested.

 
I have now had the opportunity to review your request, the response you
were sent and your request for a review.
 
I can confirm that the Council does hold the information but unfortunately
it is not in an easily retrievable format nor is there an automated
mechanism that would allow it to be easily collated. The question you have
asked is very specific and cases are not recorded in this way. In order to
obtain this information the Council would have to review every enforcement
case over the last 5 years to research and establish whether it is
relevant to your request. The Council receives in the region of 600-650
enforcement investigations a year and the files are not held in a single
manner to allow easy retrieval. Further this information is not
necessarily located in a single place within files and so each entire file
would have to be reviewed to locate the information you are seeking.
Clearly this task would be impossible within 18 hours even for one year
and there is no obvious way that your request could be reformulated so as
to bring the work required under the appropriate limit.
 
Therefore I agree that the large amount of work required to respond to
your request, as described above, would exceed this limit and the Council
was correct to refuse it.
 
I appreciate that you believe there to be only one such case but the
Council would still need to review all cases in order to establish this
fact. You also suggest that the head of enforcement should be able to do
this from memory. I hope you appreciate this would not be an accurate way
of obtaining the information and further the Freedom of Information Act
only provides a right of access to recorded information, it does not
provide access to information in officers’ heads.
 
If you remain dissatisfied you have the right to seek an independent
review from the Information Commissioner. Requests for a review by the
Information Commissioner should be made in writing directly to:
 
The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire SK9 5AF
[1][email address]
Tel: 01625 545 700
Fax: 01625 545 510
 
Yours sincerely
 
Louise Jackson
Information Governance Support Officer
Telephone 01904 552933 
 
 
 
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