SLGGS - Craig Inquiry Correspondence

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Kent County Council should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Kent County Council,

Please provide copies of all correspondence between any KCC employee and any member(s) of the SLGGS Governing body, jointly and severally, which specifically references or discusses the Inquiry/Disciplinary Report known as 'The Craig Enquiry' or any other or memo/correspondence produced by Dr.Iain Craig in relation to his investigation into Simon Langton Girls Grammar School in Canterbury.

Please confirm that all copies of email correspondence are sourced from the server archives and not from a local capture to ensure that all actual correspondence is produced.

Yours faithfully,

Tom Gregory

Kent County Council

Dear Mr Gregory

 

Thank you for your email below.

 

Kent County Council acknowledges your request for information under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Assuming KCC holds this information, we
will endeavour to supply the data to you as soon as possible but no later
than 9^th June 2017 (20 working days from date of receipt).

 

We will advise you as soon as possible if we do not hold this information
or if there are exemptions to be considered and/or any costs for providing
the information. Please quote our reference - FOI/17/0831 - in any
communication regarding this particular request.

 

Best regards

 

Carly Wattle | Information Access Officer | Information Resilience &
Transparency Team | Kent County Council | Room 2.71, Sessions House,
Maidstone, ME14 1XQ | Phone 03000 417061 | Fax 03000 420303 | 
[1]http://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council...
|

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Kent County Council

Dear Mr Gregory

 

Quality checks have revealed that we quoted an incorrect latest complete
by date in our acknowledgement below.

 

The latest date that you can expect a response by is actually 8th June
2017.

 

Please accept my sincere apologies for any inconvenience or confusion that
this error may have caused you.

 

Kind regards

 

Caroline Dodge | Team Leader | Information Resilience & Transparency Team
| Kent County Council | Room 2.71, Sessions House, Maidstone, ME14
1XQ | Phone 03000 416033 | Fax 03000 420303 | 
[1]http://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council...

 

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Kent County Council

Dear Mr Gregory

 

Thank you for your request for information.

 

I am afraid we cannot comply with your request for information. It would
take in excess of the appropriate limit to locate extract and collate
information meeting the scope of your request so under section 12 of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000, we are not obliged to deal. Below is an
explanation as to why it is currently prohibitive to search the KCC estate
for the information you have requested.

 

The data stored within the KCC systems is spread across a complex and
large infrastructure and is not necessarily indexed to enable fast search
capabilities.

 

Microsoft Exchange

 

The Microsoft Cloud Exchange environment backups only cover a period of 30
days and these are valid only for a point in time when they were taken.

 

It is possible to undertake a complete search of the database (30 days)
using a tool called Discovery mailbox search. As this is a very powerful
tool no one currently has access to it, access has to be assigned for a
specific purpose.  This search tool has not been used in KCC before and
its impact on the live service is not yet known. The estimated time to
search the entire Exchange store would be approximately 3 – 4 days per
search. (i.e. if more than one search item was required this could
increase the search time by 3 – 4 days per item). The complete mailbox
store extends to approximately 15,000 mailboxes and greater than
2TeraBytes. At present ICT does not have enough storage space to recover
all the mailboxes so either we would have to purchase additional storage
or the recovery of the mailboxes is undertaken as a phased approach which
would extend the overall search time considerably.

 

SAN storage

 

KCC stores in excess of 60 Million files – 14TB data.

Recent attempts at complete searches of the SAN store have proven to take
a long time. A typical search taking approximately 4 days. Other searches
have been attempted but these have failed due to time out issues. Any
search will only be a snapshot of what is there at a particular point in
time.

ICT does not have any special tools that would enable faster searches to
take place. Additionally it is unlikely that a search that we can
undertake at present using the Microsoft search option is able to
interrogate specific application databases.

 

Summary

 

A search of the type requested is logistically a large piece of work. It
would take a lot of time (possibly 1 to 2 weeks), effort and possibly the
purchase of additional storage and even then would only allow for 30 days
from now to be restored in respect of the e-mail infrastructure.  Certain
areas would not be covered by either of these searches such as application
databases and scanned documents.

 

However, we can run a “traffic report” which simply records the volume of
emails between designated addresses. Such a report indicated that from
1^st January 2016 to 16^th May 2017 over 5500 emails passed between
@kent.gov.uk and @langton.kent.sch.uk. This figure is typical of the
volume of correspondence passing between KCC and any school. This report
does not link to the actual emails (which may no longer exist) or show any
information about the content of those emails. Therefore, we cannot
distinguish between the dozens of emails that pass between KCC and the
School each day on general administrative matters, and those that may have
mentioned the “Craig Report”.

 

If you are unhappy with this response, and believe KCC has not complied
with legislation, please ask for a review by following our complaints
process; details can be found at this link
[1]http://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council...
 on our website. Please quote reference FOI/17/0831.

 

If you still remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you can
appeal to the Information Commissioner, who oversees compliance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000. Details of what you need to do, should
you wish to pursue this course of action, are available from the
Information Commissioner’s website [2]http://ico.org.uk/concerns

 

Best regards

 

Caroline Dodge | Team Leader | Information Resilience & Transparency Team
| Kent County Council | Room 2.71, Sessions House, Maidstone, ME14
1XQ | Phone 03000 416033 | Fax 03000 420303 | 
[3]http://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council...
|

 

 

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Dear Ms. Dodge,

Thank you for your response but I am unable to understand why a database email search of this nature is 'too big a task' for KCC IT and Education Teams and respectfully request that this case is subject to a proper internal review.

Firstly Dr. Craig was commissioned to write this report in July 2016 - limiting the search period from Mid July 2016 to March 2017, a period which also covers the Summer Holiday, which is some 8 months and does not require you to look through the 5500 mails sent in the 16 month period between Jan and May 2017 as listed in your example.

With the amount of email already halved a search could then easily be made by searching by specific sender email address (excluding any emails sent from school admin addresses or by out of scope personnel and by searching only on the known email addresses of Governors. I would be VERY surprised if a complete back up of all emails for a number of years was not being retained by KCC needed to comply with Legal disclosures in the event of a court order for such information being served on yourselves. I would expect this back up to be fully searchable and having narrowed the search down to only the specific email addresses of Governors to exclude anything not related to the enquiry.

Can you please review this request and explain (in light of the above) why this simple request is being refused?

Yours sincerely,

Tom Gregory

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

Kent County Council

Dear Mr Gregory

Thank you for your email.

I am sorry you are unhappy with KCC’s response to your request for information.

An independent officer who was not involved with your original request will investigate your complaint and review our original response on behalf of the Head of Paid Service. Their reply will be forthcoming within 20 working days from receipt (by 29th June 2017)

Best regards

Caroline Dodge | Team Leader | Information Resilience & Transparency Team | Kent County Council | Room 2.71, Sessions House, Maidstone, ME14 1XQ | Phone 03000 416033 | Fax 03000 420303 | http://www.kent.gov.uk/about-the-council... |

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Kent County Council

1 Attachment

Dear Sir

 

Please see attached letter.

 

Yours faithfully

 

 

Denise Burring

Solicitor | Corporate Law and Assurance Team | Strategic and Corporate
Services | Governance and Law | Room 1.97 Sessions House Maidstone Kent
County Council ME14 1XQ | Telephone 03000 416979 [1]www.kent.gov.uk

 

 

 

CLA03 / 05874791

References

Visible links
1. http://www.kent.gov.uk/

Kent County Council

2 Attachments

Dear Mr Gregory

 

Please find attached a response from the Council further to the receipt of
your complaint to the Information Commissioner.

 

Yours Sincerely,

 

Denise Burring

Solicitor | Office of the General Counsel | Strategic and Corporate
Services | Governance and Law | Room 1.97 Sessions House Maidstone Kent
County Council ME14 1XQ | Telephone 03000 416979 [1]www.kent.gov.uk

 

 

 

References

Visible links
1. http://www.kent.gov.uk/