Shared Projects with Arms Companies
Dear Lancaster University,
I am writing to formally request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Specifically, I would like to request the following details:
Does the university have any joint initiatives or research projects with arms and defence companies?
- This includes, but is not limited to, companies such as Airbus, Babcock International, BAE Systems, Boeing, Chemring, Elbit Systems, General Dynamics, General Electric, Honeywell, Huntington Ingalls, JCB, L3Harris Technologies, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Meggitt, Northrop Grumman, QinetiQ, Rolls-Royce PLC, RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), Smiths Group and Thales.
What is the nature of these relationships?
If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please provide advice and assistance, under the Section 16 obligations of the Act, as to how I can refine my request. If you need any clarification on any part of my request, then please contact me using this email address.
Under your section 16 duty to provide advice and assistance I would expect you to contact me if you find this request unmanageable in any way before the twentieth working day. If for any reason you are not able to fulfil all parts of my request, please respond to those that you can respond to, setting out your reasons for not responding to the entire request.
Should you require any clarification or further details regarding this request, please do not hesitate to contact me via email. I am more than willing to discuss and refine the request as needed.
Thank you for your attention to this matter. I look forward to your response.
Yours faithfully,
Tabs Noreen
Dear Tabs Noreen,
We note that you have made three Freedom of Information requests regarding Investments in Arms Companies, Shared Projects with Arms Companies and Links to Israeli Universities on 10th of September 2024. We are permitted under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and Regulation 5 of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 to aggregate the cost of complying with different requests, made by the same person, where the information requested relate "to any extent" (Regulation 5) to the same or similar information which are received within 60 consecutive working days. The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) consider requests that relate to the same or similar information, where there is an overarching theme or common thread running between the requests in terms of the nature of the information that has been requested, to be eligible to be aggregated for the purposes of the appropriate cost limit. The first two requests appear to both involve the theme of Investments in and Shared Projects with Arms Companies. As these two requests appear to fit the Commissioner's guidance for aggregating similar requests from the same requester, we will be combining your two requests when calculating whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, and you will receive an email shortly containing your FOI unique reference number for the aggregated request on Arms Companies and a separate unique number for the other request on Links to Israeli Universities.
Kind regards,
The Information Governance Team
Lancaster University
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