Specialist school placements requested and agreed to in 2022-2024 by child's ethnicity

Dear Ms Kalisz,

FOI request: FOI-3892

Thank you for your request dated 02/04/2025

Your request will be answered by 02/05/2025

If you have any queries about this request, please contact me, quoting the reference number above.

Yours sincerely,

David White
Head of Information, Safety and Community Services
Directorate of Communities, Environment and Central
Royal Borough of Greenwich

 3rd Floor, The Woolwich Centre, 35 Wellington Street, London, SE18 6HQ
http://www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk/

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Dear Ms Kalisz

Freedom of Information request:  FOI-3892

Thank you for your request dated 2 April 2025.

Our response is as follows:

provide the following data regarding children for whom your LEA has issued
or maintained the Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans in 2022-2024:

1.Number of parental requests (aka expressed preference) for a specialist
school placement made under Section 38(3) of the Children and Families Act
(CFA) 2014, broken down by the year and the child's ethnicity.

Section 12 see below

2. Number of cases, where a specialist school was named in section I of
EHC plans, in response to such requests/ expressions of preference, broken
down by the year and the child's ethnicity.

Section 12 see below

Please be advised that Section 10 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA) states that a public authority must reply to a request for
information promptly and in any event not later than the twentieth working
day following the date of receipt.

Section 12

Section 12(1) does not oblige a local authority to comply with a request
for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with
the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and
Fees) Regulations 2004 (“the Fees Regulations) sets the appropriate limit
at £450 for the public authority in question. Under these Regulations, a
public authority can charge a maximum of £25 per hour for work undertaken
to comply with a request. This equates to 18 hours work.

A public authority is only required to provide a reasonable estimate or
breakdown of costs and in putting together its estimate it can take the
following processes into consideration:-

 a. Determining whether it holds the information
 b. Locating the information, or a document which may contain the
information;
 c. Retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the
information, and
 d. Extracting the information from a document containing it.

We have estimated the length of time it will take to do the following
tasks in accordance with section 12.

Retrieving and extracting the information.

To retrieve and extract the information one officer will have to read
through each electronic file this would take approximately 15 minutes (5
minutes to locate file and 10 minutes to retrieve and extract the
information. (15 minutes x 589 records /60) = 147.25 hours

Total hours to complete the request equates to 147.25  hours

We estimate that it will take us in excess of 18 hours to determine the
appropriate material and locate, retrieve and extract the information in
reference to your request. The council is not obliged to comply with this
request because it exceeds the appropriate limit.

Section 16 of the Act imposes an obligation on public authorities to
provide advice and assistance to a person making a request, so far as it
is reasonable to do so.

Information with regards to special schools ethnicity can be found via the
below link

[1]Get Information about Schools - GOV.UK

.

If you have any queries about this correspondence, please contact me,
quoting the reference number above.

If you are not satisfied with our response to your request, you can ask
for an Internal Review.  Internal review requests must be submitted within
two months of the date of receipt of the response to your original
request.  If you wish to do this, please contact us in writing, setting
out why you are dissatisfied.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the Internal Review, you may
apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. 
Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted the
Internal Review procedure provided by the Council. You can contact the ICO
by emailing [2][email address], or by post at Customer Contact,
Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow,
SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Team

Directorate of Communities and Environment

Royal Borough of Greenwich

* The Woolwich Centre, Wellington Street, Woolwich, London, SE18 6HQ

8 [3]www.royalgreenwich.gov.uk

ü Please consider the environment before printing this email

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