Staff Survey

The request was successful.

Dear Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council,

Please provide a copy of results of the recent staff survey issued by Ipsos Mori and described by the Chief Executive as painting a difficult picture of staff morale and job satisfaction.

Please also advise me of how much was charged by Ipsos Mori for this survey and report.

Yours faithfully,

Casey Jones

Dear Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council,

By law, you should have responded to my request by 10 September. Please let me know what is causing the delay and when you expect to respond in full.

Thank you

Yours faithfully,

Casey Jones

Corrin, Jane, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council

Good Afternoon,

I refer to your request for information; your request was as follows:-

 

Please provide a copy of results of the recent staff survey issued by
Ipsos Mori and described by the Chief Executive as painting a difficult
picture of staff morale and job satisfaction.

 

Please also advise me of how much was charged by Ipsos Mori for this
survey and report.

 

I consider that the information you have requested is exempt information
under section 36 of the Freedom of Information Act, 2000. Section 36
provides an exemption, if disclosure would or would be likely to;-

 

(b) inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or exchange of views;
or

(c) otherwise prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs

 

Section 36 requires the qualified person, which for a local Authority is
the Monitoring Officer, to give their reasonable opinion that disclosure
would/would be likely to cause the types of prejudice or inhibition listed
above.

 

Section 36 is a qualified exemption and subject to the public interest
test.  As the qualified person, I have had regard to guidance issued by
the Information Commissioner’s Office, “prejudice to the effective conduct
of public affairs (section 36), Version 2, 22 March 2013.  

 

The Council has recently undertaken a staff survey and sought open and
candid feedback from staff to a set of questions to help the Council make
improvement and inform decision making (as appropriate). Some of the
feedback received may help formulate policy/procedures or lead to
revisions of existing policy/procedures. I believe that the release of the
requested information would compromise or potentially compromise the work
that has been done and is still being undertaken which affects the
Council’s employees.  It is my reasonable opinion that disclosure of the
requested information would inhibit the free and frank provision of advice
or the exchange of views.  The Council is seeking open and candid feedback
to help inform improvements and change as considered necessary, which
requires a ‘safe space’ for deliberation.

 

I also consider that in my reasonable opinion, if the requested
information were disclosed, there would likely to be a “chilling effect”
which would inhibit the free and frank provision of advice or exchange of
views between our employees and senior managers.  Any disclosure would
undermine the work already undertaken, employees have a right to express
an open and candid view to senior managers and they have the right for
those views to be kept internal to the Council.

 

I am required to carry out a public interest in connection with the
section 36 exemption. I have had regard to the following:-:

 

Public interest factors in favour of maintaining the exemption

 

o Disclosure would restrict the free and frank exchanges of views.
o Disclosure would give a distorted/incomplete view as there may be
further work undertaken as a result of the staff survey.
o Disclosure would have a potential detrimental effect on the future
work the Council wishes to undertake.  

 

 

Public interest factors in favour of disclosure

o Transparency in the process of the provision of advice and exchanging
views

 

I consider that the public interest test in maintaining the exemption
outweighs the public interest in disclosure of the staff survey
information.  I consider it is crucial that Employees can feedback open
and candid answers to questions posed in confidence on the understanding
that those answers are used within Council to help inform and make
requisite improvements to, for example, their working environment and
practices. Employees must be able to take part in an exchange of views,
when important matters concerning the future of the Council are being
discussed.  There is a strong public interest in ensuring the Council is
able to do this.  

 

I am aware that your request is due today and do not wish to delay it
whilst the costs are being established for the staff survey; you will be
sent details of these costs in the very near future.

 

I am therefore refusing your request for information and have relied on
the exemption contained in Section 36, as described in the body of my
response.  You have the right to request an internal review, which should
be addressed to the Information and Central Services Manager, Wallasey
Town Hall, Brighton Street, Wallasey,  CH44 8ED,  email,
[1][email address]. You also have the right to complain to the
Information Commissioner, whose address is the Information Commissioner’s
Office,

Wycliffe House,

Water Lane,

Wilmslow,

Cheshire SK9 5AF

[2]www.ico.gov.uk

 

Tel -0303 123 113

 

Sent on behalf of

Surjit Tour

Head of Legal and Member Services and Monitoring Officer

Department of Transformation and Resources

Wirral Borough Council

 

Email: [3][email address]

 

 

 

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Dear Corrin, Jane,
Thank you for your response, which I am struggling to understand. Please confirm how many council staff have been given access to the result of the Ipsos survey and what assurances were provided by them to keep the contents secret.

Yours sincerely,

Casey Jones

William Jenkins left an annotation ()

Oh Dear. That can not be a serious response from WBC.Instead of answering genuine justified requests for information we are now seeing stock refusals to requesters. I dont recall this survey being marked as Top Secret.

Casey Jones left an annotation ()

I'm tempted to have one of my contacts in the Council send me a copy so that I can pass it to John Brace for publication. I don't understand how a document that has been sent to thousands of staff can be considered secret.

Dear Jane,

For clarity, I am still awaiting a response to the second part of my original FOI request which was in relation to the cost of the Ipsos Mori survey. Please advise me of the likely timescale for a response to this.

In addition, I do not consider the reason for refusing the first part of my original request to be acceptable, hence the additional questions regarding how many staff have been given access to the result of this allegedly confidential survey and what assurances have those staff given that they will not share those results outside of the council. Please advise me of the timescale for a response to this. Please note, I will be taking the response to this question into account when considering whether to appeal your refusal to supply the requested survey results.

Yours sincerely,

Casey Jones

Dear Jane,

Can I remind you that you are well past the response date of 10 September to the second part of my initial FOI request. For clarity, here is that question again;
"Please also advise me of how much was charged by Ipsos Mori for that survey and report."
Please let me have a response to this, or let me know when I can expect one.

In addition, on 15 September I asked the following (which is a separate question);
"Please confirm how many council staff have been given access to the
result of the Ipsos survey and what assurances were provided by
them to keep the contents secret."
Please let me have a response to this, or let me know when I can expect one.

Thank you.

Yours sincerely,

Casey Jones

InfoMgr, FinDMT, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council

Good Morning

 

Thank you for your further correspondence, your request received on 11^th
September 2014 has been acknowledged and is being treated as a new request
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

 

Wirral Borough Council will aim to issue a substantive response within the
statutory timeframe.

 

Kind Regards

 

Tracy O'Hare

Information Management

Transformation and Resources

Wirral Council

 

This information supplied to you is copyrighted and continues to  be
protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. You are free  to
use it for your own purposes, including any non commercial research  you
are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other reuse, for 
example commercial publication, would require our specific permission, 
may involve licensing and the application of a charge.

 

 

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Dear Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Staff Survey'.

My request for details of the cost of the Ipsos Mori survey was made on 12 August and I am still awaiting an answer. This is well past the deadline of 10 September as required by the Act

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

Yours faithfully,

Casey Jones

InfoMgr, FinDMT, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council

Good Afternoon,

 

Thank you for your further email below.   The cost to the council for the
Ipsos Mori survey and report was paid over 2 invoices and the figures are
below, the results were available to all staff. 

 

 1. 1/10/2013: £7450.00
 2. 11/6/2014: £9100.00

 

With regard to the confidentiality of responses and these responses not
being able to be assigned to individuals; to help ensure the Council
received frank and candid feedback - The front page of the survey, which
was an introduction from the Chief Executive said:

 

To make sure that no-one at the Council can find out who has taken part,
or what they have said, we’ve asked the independent market research agency
Ipsos MORI to manage the survey for the Council. The information you give
us will be treated in confidence and no individual forms will be sent to
us.

 

With regards to the results report, this confidentiality was reiterated by
Page 4 of the results report stating:

Throughout the survey process, care has been taken to preserve respondent
confidentiality. The answers given by individual respondents are not
released by Ipsos MORI, only the aggregate findings. In the computer
tables, groups of staff which are fewer than 10 in number do not appear in
the columns of the tables, so that they cannot be identified if someone
cross-references the data against specific questions.

 

Yours Sincerely

Jane Corrin

Information and Central Services Manager

Transformation and Resources

Wirral Council

[email address]

 

 

The information supplied to you is copyrighted to Wirral Council and
continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-commercial
research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other
reuse, for example commercial publication, would require our specific
permission, may involve licensing and the application of a charge.

 

 

 

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