Dear Ms Robinson

Thank you for your email of 13th September 2016, requesting information about Staff Severance Payments.

Your request will be dealt with under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and will be answered within twenty school days.

If you have any queries about this request do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards
Sarah Jones
Senior Operations Administrator

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Dear Ms Robinson

We write further to your email of 13th September, in which you requested information about severance payments. We respond as follows:

In respect of the year ending 31st August 2016, you requested information as to the amount of staff severance pay within the Trust, broken down by Academy and where any amount exceeds £5,000, a list of the individual payments.

This information is exempt from disclosure under sections 22 and 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Section 22 of the FOIA exempts information from disclosure if it is intended for publication at a future date. The Trust’s accounts are due for publication next year and will contain an analysis of severance payments across the Trust. The accounts will be available free of charge through the Companies House Beta service and on the Trust’s website.

To the extent that the analysis in the Trust’s accounts will not contain all of the details you have requested, this information is exempt from disclosure under section 40 of the FOIA. This is because it constitutes personal data as defined in the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and disclosing it would breach the fair processing principle set out in the DPA.

If we were to disclose the information in the manner you have requested, although anonymised, it would lead to people being identifiable. Overall, we do not consider that the public interest outweighs the rights of the relevant individuals who would not have a reasonable expectation of such disclosure and it would not, therefore, be fair to release this information.

If you are dissatisfied with the handling of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of receipt of the response to your original letter and should be addressed to: The Chief Operating Officer, Bright Tribe Trust, Building 1000.

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at: Information Commissioner's Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF. King’s Reach, Stockport, SK4 2HG.

Kind regards
Bright Tribe Trust

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