Tony Kershaw Head of Law and Governance

The request was refused by West Sussex County Council.

Dear West Sussex County Council,

Please confirm the total number of occasions between 1 April 2014 and the present day, that Tony Kershaw provided advice to Peter Catchpole.

Please also confirm the number of these instances that are formally recorded and the number of these that are not, with supporting rationale for records not being kept.

Yours faithfully,

Martyn lewis

Freedom of Information Act,

Dear Mr Lewis ,

Thank you for your enquiry, which has been forwarded to the appropriate officers for a response. The usual timescale for a response is twenty working days, that is by or on 2nd October.

If for any reason the Council needs to extend this timescale you will be notified in accordance with the relevant legislation.

Please note that in 2012 the County Council adopted a position in principle that FoI and EIR requests to West Sussex County Council and the Council's responses may be published on the Council's website in a suitably anonymised form. This is in addition to the individual response to the requestor, and in line with the Council's commitment to transparency and open data.

Yours sincerely,

Kerry Rickman

Kerry Rickman | Customer Relations Officer , Customer Relations Team , Communities Directorate, West Sussex County Council | Location: County Hall , West Street , Chichester, PO19 1RQ
Internal: x 28801 | External: 033 022 28222 | E-mail: [email address]

Caroline Pegg,

Dear Mr Lewis,
I refer to your request dated 2nd September 2017 which has been dealt with under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Your request was for:

'Please confirm the total number of occasions between 1 April 2014 and the present day, that Tony Kershaw provided advice to Peter Catchpole.'

'Please also confirm the number of these instances that are formally recorded and the number of these that are not, with supporting rationale for records not being kept.'

We have now completed a search for the information which you requested and I confirm the Authority holds information relevant to the request.

The Authority declines to disclose the information you have requested and has applied the exemption in:
Section 42 - Legal professional privilege
The information you seek is confidential communications between the client and lawyer, made for the main purpose of seeking or giving legal advice.

Having applied a qualified exemption I went on to consider whether it would nevertheless be in the public interest to disclose the information to you.

I am not aware of any public interest in knowing the number of times over a number of years legal advice has been given to a Councillor and whether or not that advice is recorded.
The following aims support the application of the exemption:

• The inherent public interests expressed explicitly or implicitly in the particular exemption applied.

We have decided that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure.

If you are unhappy with the way your request has been handled, you may wish to ask for a review of our decision via [email address].

If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Generally, the ICO cannot make a decision unless you have exhausted our internal review procedure. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

The Information Commissioner's Office,
Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Yours sincerely
Caroline Pegg

Caroline Pegg | Solicitor | West Sussex County Council
Telephone: 033022 22733
Email: [email address] or [email address]
Address: Room 202, County Hall, West Street, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 1RQ
DX: 157410 Chichester 8

The Legal Services of Brighton and Hove City Council, East Sussex County Council,
Surrey County Council and West Sussex County Council working in partnership

This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the persons addressed. If it has come to you in error please reply to advise us but you should not read it, copy it, show it to anyone else nor make any other use of its content. West Sussex County Council takes steps to ensure emails and attachments are virus-free but you should carry out your own checks before opening any attachment.