Tree Officer qualifications
Dear Mole Valley District Council,
Could you please provide an ANONYMISED listing of each MVDC Tree Officer and their highest qualification that could reasonably be inferred as a qualfication to make decisions regarding TPO planning applications?
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Pleming
Dear Mr Pleming
Thank you for your information request submitted under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.
Please be advised that your request is being dealt with and you will
receive a response within 20 working days, which will be 17^th November
2020.
Regards
Kate Butcher
Customer Care Officer
Freedom of Information Officer
Mole Valley District Council
01306 885001
[1]www.molevalley.gov.uk
Dear Mr Pleming
Thank you for your information request submitted under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.
Please be advised that an identical information request was received from
you on 24^th September 2019. A copy of the response is attached and the
information remains exempt from disclosure under section 40 (personal
information) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
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: Louise Bircher, Mole Valley
District Council, Pippbrook, Dorking, Surrey, RH4 1SJ.
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 Or by calling 0303 123 1113 (local rate) Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm.
Regards
Kate Butcher
Customer Care Officer
Freedom of Information Officer
Mole Valley District Council
01306 885001
[1]www.molevalley.gov.uk
Dear Mole Valley District Council,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Mole Valley District Council's handling of my FOI request 'Tree Officer qualifications'.
I requested an anonymised list of qualification of a class of their officers. On the first occassion you refused stating the data was personal. I repeated with a request that emphasised that the request was anonymised, they have still refused.
The request is not personal and you should provide the data.
Please provide the anonymised data: a list of a single field of qualifications, no identifying fields as well.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/t...
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Pleming
Dear Mr Pleming
Thank you for your request for an Internal Review submitted under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please be advised that your request is being dealt with and you will
receive a response within 20 working days, which will be 19^th January
2021.
Regards
Kate Butcher
Customer Care Officer
Freedom of Information Officer
Mole Valley District Council
01306 885001
[1]www.molevalley.gov.uk
Dear Mr Pleming
My name is Louise Bircher and I am the Customer Care Manager for Mole
Valley District Council (MVDC). As you have expressed dissatisfaction with
the response you received to your Freedom of Information request that was
sent to you on 13^th November 2020, I have carried out an Internal Review.
The purpose of an Internal Review is to consider your representations and
determine whether MVDC handled your request in a manner consistent with
our duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and/or the
Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).
By way of a reminder, this is the request for information you made, our
response and your reply that is being considered under this Internal
Review:
On the 24^th September 2019 at 20:18 you submitted a request for “an
anonymised listing of each MVDC Tree Officer and their highest
qualification that could reasonably be inferred as a qualification to make
decisions regarding TPO planning applications?”
On the 18^th October 2019 at 12:24 this request was refused as the
information is exempt from disclosure under section 40 (personal
information) of the FOIA. It is not possible to disclose the
qualifications of individuals employed by MVDC because the information
constitutes personal data as defined in the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA)
and disclosing it would breach the fair processing principle set out in
the DPA.
On the 20^th October 2020 at 11:43 you submitted a request for “an
ANONYMISED listing of each MVDC Tree Officer and their highest
qualification that could reasonably be inferred as a qualification to make
decisions regarding TPO planning applications?”
On the 13^th November 2020 at 10:09 this request was refused under Section
14 (repeated requests) of the FOIA. This is because the request was
identical to the information requested on the 24^th September 2019 and our
position has not changed.
I appreciate that you have asked for the list to be anonymised however it
may be helpful for me to explain that MVDC is a very small Council and
there is only one Tree Officer with the responsibility of making decisions
regarding TPO planning applications. Therefore it would be very easy to
identify the officer in question which means any such list would not and
cannot be anonymised. I am therefore satisfied that we have met our duties
under the FOIA and I confirm that the information requested is exempt from
disclosure under section 40 (personal information) of the FOIA. This is
because the information constitutes personal data as defined in the Data
Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and disclosing it would breach the fair
processing principle set out in the DPA.
This concludes my Internal Review. If you are not content with the
outcome, 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 Or by calling 0303 123 1113 (local rate)
Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm.
Yours sincerely
Louise Bircher
Customer Care Manager
Mole Valley District Council
01306 885001
[1]www.molevalley.gov.uk
Dear Mole Valley District Council,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Mole Valley District Council's handling of my FOI request 'Tree Officer qualifications'.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/t...
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Pleming
Dear Mr Pleming
Thank you for your request for an internal review submitted under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Please be advised that internal review requests must be submitted within two months of the date of receipt of the response to your original request.
Because the response to your original request was made on the 13th November 2020 the time for submitting an internal review request has passed.
I am therefore unable to process your request for an internal review.
Regards
Kate Butcher
Customer Care Officer
Freedom of Information Officer
Mole Valley District Council
01306 885001
www.molevalley.gov.uk
Dear Freedom Of Information,
This was your response last time, providing me with the obvious option: to initiate a repeat FoI request to start the clock again.
I am glad to see good value for money in local government.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Pleming
Dear Mole Valley District Council,
Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.
I am writing to request an internal review of Mole Valley District Council's handling of my FOI request 'Tree Officer qualifications'.
My request is clearly relevant to the rationale of your advice, indeed, when I spoke to your Head of Planning regarding tree issues, I was asked whether I was qualified. Why is this not relevant in relation to your internal advice?
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/t...
Yours faithfully,
Andrew Pleming
Dear Mr Pleming
Thank you for your request for an Internal Review.
Please be advised that an Internal Review into the handling of your
request has previously been conducted and a response was sent to you on
7^th January 2021, copy attached.
Our position remains the same and we have nothing further to add. 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 Or by calling 0303 123 1113 (local rate) Monday to Friday 9am – 5pm.
Regards
Kate Butcher
Customer Care Officer
Freedom of Information Officer
Mole Valley District Council
01306 885001
[1]www.molevalley.gov.uk
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