TVG documentation

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Stanton St Quinton Parish Council,

Under the Freedom of Information Act please provide copies all documents, emails, correspondence, recordings (video or audio), notes of telephone conversations, draft minutes, etc. that are in the possession of the parish council or parish councillors and relate to the parish council's two applications for a Town and Village Green (TVG) in 2018 and 2019.

Please also include anything that relates to the land claimed for TVG or nearby land.

I believe that you are seeking to have posts installed around this land. I have advised you that the utilities have services underneath and that the fire services has stated this is their preferred route to my house. I assume then that you have checked with the utilities and particularly the fire service that these posts are acceptable. Please provide copies of this correspondence too.

Naturally I understand you will need to redact personal information, such as email addresses, telephone numbers, etc. other than names and positions.

Yours faithfully,

Malcolm Reeves

Box Parish Council,

Dear Mr Reeves

Thank you for your letter. I will endeavour to get the information together - you will be aware that there will be a charge for any hard copies.

With regards to your earlier email I still hold the old minute books. I would have to raise the issue of lodging these with Wiltshire Council.

Yours sincerely

Margaret Carey

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Dear Box Parish Council,

I should have said electronic copies are acceptable and preferred.

Strictly, since this request is via What do you know then electronic copies are the only copies you can send me unless this is not possible and we need to arrange for paper, in which case I believe you need to let me know why electronic copies are not possible and also the cost of paper copies before hand.

I would also point out that you are assuming I am the same Malcolm Reeves that emailed you which you should not assume. And you are also disclosing a previous private email conversation on this public forum which although trivial in this case is not the proper way to do things.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Dear Box Parish Council,

I see that the agenda for the meeting on 16 Sept has this item:

7. To receive and correspondence including
* Freedom of Information request

This seems an unusual way to process an FOI request and I have never heard of an FOI request becoming a meeting agenda item before being answered. ICO guidance says FOI requests should be processed promptly and certainly within 20 working days. Given PC meetings are often more than 20 working days apart then if this was normal procedure the ICO rules would often be broken. It is fortunate in this case that my request was only made on 2 Sept, 10 working days before this meeting, although that is still 10 days of lost time.

I would also remind you that although the results of FOI requests can be published and indeed this is encouraged by the ICO, that no personal details of the requester are published, just so that you do not get in trouble with the ICO. Also, as I have mentioned before you cannot assume I am the same Malcolm Reeves or even that my real name is Malcolm Reeves since aliases can and are used on Whatdotheyknow.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Dear Box Parish Council,

Would you please reply to this email address in regards to the FOI request submitted from this web site rather than to another email that you assume is the same person. This web site is specifically for making FOI and putting this information into the public domain. If you reply offline then you defeat its purpose. Also the FOI act requires you to reply to the requester, in this case the Whatdotheyknow website, so you are not complying with the act if you do not reply to this website email address.

If, for this specific FOI request, you cannot supply electronic copies, which is all the website can accept of course then please explain why? To this website email address naturally. No other public body seems to have this problem. And I struggle to understand why emails cannot be supplied as electronic copies. I would direct you to FOI Act 2000, s11 which sets out the duties in regards to supplying information and requires you to explain why my requested format (the only format for this website) is not practical and it has to be paper .

Note, to save any confusion, I am using the word copies in the loose sense meaning that I require the information in the document, not a certified copy of an original document which of course would need to be paper. All other FOI departments seem to understand this.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Dear Mr Reeves
Further to our previous correspondence can you please use only the
following email address for all issues relating to Stanton St Quintin
[1][email address]
Can you please resend your email dated 17th September 2020 to this address
and I will answer it
Yours sincerely
Margaret Carey
Clerk to Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

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Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Dear Mr Reeves
I have collated the information that you have requested under the Freedom
of Information Act. Copies of correspondence and emails will be in hard
copies at a cost of 15p per copy.
Unfortunately, I suffered a serious technical problem with my computer in
March this year which resulted in a considerable amount of data including
electronic accounts and all emails prior to that date being lost so I am
unable to send any emails to you.  I have spoken to the Information
Commissioners Office about this issue.  
Copies of these together with the Minutes books will be made available for
you at the Village Hall, Stanton St Quintin.  Can you please let me have
some dates that will be convenient for you so that I can ensure that the
hall is free at that time.
Yours sincerely
Margaret Carey
Clerk to Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

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Dear Margaret Carey,

Thank you for the explanation. I'm surprised that you only now mention this. Can you explain what data you retain as it is unclear to me. Do you always print out emails and save them as hard copy and so have these? But then you say the emails are lost before March 2020. How far back does this loss extend? Can you tell me what data it is that you have a hard copy and how that came about to be hard copy (if not obvious such as it being an actually letter). Also I would assume that emails would have been forwarded to the various councillors. Surely you can rebuild the emails with copies from the councillors you forwarded the emails to?

I don't believe the village hall has a photocopier so is your plan to bring all the paper copies you retain after the computer crash for me to look at together with the minute book and then take orders for the copies I would I like?

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Dear Mr Reeves
In reply to your email, I am very sorry that I did not mention the issue
with the loss of all my emails before.  I did not know of the What Do They
Know website until your request was received and I was therefore unaware
of how you wanted the information.
I have always printed out significant emails when I receive them and I
take these to the Parish Council meetings to be discussed by the Council. 
I do not normally forward these to Councillors as Parish Councils should
not discuss official business via email.
I am sorry if I was unclear in my email to you.  I have kept a file on the
Village Green with all the correspondence received and the emails that I
have printed off.  I have made copies of these and they will be available
to you.
I can assure you that I am making every effort to provide the relevant
information as you requested.  Please let me know some dates that will be
convenient for you to attend the Village Hall at Stanton St Quintin to
obtain the documents
Yours sincerely
Margaret Carey
Clerk to Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

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Dear Margaret Carey,

I think the best way to close off this online request is for me to ask that you supply a list of the emails you retain as paper copies (date, from, to, number of pages) and any other documents you hold in paper that the FOI request covers (date, from, to, number of pages).

I will contact you offline about viewing these and other documents. Have you considered the time viewing will take? I would estimate some hours, half a day maybe. I don't wish to inconvenience you.

Sutton Benger Parish Council have archived up to 2010 with Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre. I believe you just need to contact them. That would ensure the safety of the old records and perhaps you should consider backing up to cloud storage the current minutes and emails.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Dear Mr Reeves
Thank you for your email of yesterday.  I will get the list to you as soon
as possible
Yours sincerely
Margaret Carey
Clerk to Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

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Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

1 Attachment

Please find attached a list of the documentation as requested
Yours sincerely
Margaret Carey
Clerk to Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

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Dear Margaret Carey,

Thanks for the list.

You don't seem to have address my FOI request in full. You have explained that you have lost emails but my request asked for information that was in "possession of the parish council or parish councillors". You have told me what information you as Clerk have but what about the parish councillors who might have been contacted directly in relation to this matter? What documents, emails, etc. do they have? Presumably they haven't suffered the PC problems you have.

Wiltshire Council have stated that Ms Janice Green has sent 200 emails yet you only list 3. Have any councillors received any of the missing 197?

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Dear Mr Reeves
Thank you for your email.  I have asked the Parish Councillors to look for
any emails that they might have in their possession in relation to your
request.
Yours sincerely
Margaret Carey
Clerk to Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

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Dear Margaret Carey,

Thanks for the reply.

I've noticed that the line in my request

"Please also include anything that relates to the land claimed for TVG or nearby land."

Does not seem to have been actioned either. I believe Openreach have approached the Parish Council seeking to get access to their pole on the land claimed for TVG. The access is currently blocked by trees on the TVG claimed land. You have not included any of that correspondence, or did Openreach email the Chairman?

BTW by "nearby land" I primarily mean the rest of the grass area that you haven't claimed for TVG.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

I will look into this and get back to you
Margaret Carey

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Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Please see email below from Openreach which I forwarded to the Parish
Council.  I do not live in Stanton St Quintin so was unaware of the land
in question.  I did not realise that this email would form part of the
Freedom of Information
Margaret Carey

---------- Forwarded message

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Dear Margaret Carey,

Thanks for that, but has nobody replied? The Openreach email is dated 14 Sept and one would hope that someone has replied to him almost a month later. It is even likely that there was an exchange of messages that perhaps you were not copied in on between whichever councillor(s) took on the task of replying. The Parish Council Chairman perhaps?

I note that so far none of the emails or documents in the possession of the parish councils has been disclosed. Can I suggest that you chase this since legally speaking this FOI request was due by the 30 Sept.

Yours sincerely,

Malcolm Reeves

Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

Dear Mr Reeves
I can now confirm that this was dealt with by the Parish Council Chairman
in a telephone conversation
Margaret Carey

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Margaret Carey, Stanton St Quintin Parish Council

7 Attachments

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    Fwd Application to Register Land as Town Village Green Stanton St Quintin 2018 01.txt

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    Stanton St Quintin TVG Application Page 03.jpg

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    Stanton St Quintin TVG Application Page 10.jpg

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Dear Mr Reeves
Please find attached copy of an email received by the Parish Council
Chairman
Margaret Carey

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