What were the questions that were refused permission to be asked?

Sheila Oliver made this Freedom of Information request to Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.

The request was refused by Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council.

Dear Stockport Borough Council,

At the full council meeting on 4th of February the Council tried again to have the town hall protester arrested, even though he only wanted to ask two public questions, as is his legal right, and even though the Council has done nothing to comply with the Crown Court judge's wishes that they sort his problem out. The Mayor, Colin McAlister, is reported in our accurate and excellent local paper, the Stockport Express, as stating he was refused permission to ask his questions as they were about a planning matter which was sub judice. I thought the questions were about the Council framing him for a crime he did not commit and having him sent to prison. So, my question is what planning matter was Mr. Parnell apparently asking questions about and why was it sub judice?

Yours faithfully,

Sheila Oliver

FOI Officer, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Dear Mrs Oliver,

Thank you for your request for information below which has been given
reference FOI 2679. Please quote this on any correspondence regarding your
request.

Stockport Council will respond to your request within 20 working days. If
there will be a charge for disbursements e.g. photocopying in order to
provide the information, we will inform you as soon as possible to see if
you wish to proceed; however such charges are usually waived if they
amount to less than £10.

Yours sincerely,

Claire Naven

Claire Naven

Data Protection & Freedom of Information Officer

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

show quoted sections

FOI Officer, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Dear Mrs Oliver,

I am writing in response to your request for information below (ref 2679).

I can confirm that the two questions were submitted and that they were
ruled out of order in advance of the meeting. As such, the questions have
not been made public because they were not asked at the meeting. We cannot
give you copies of the questions that were asked but you are of course
free to ask the questioner what questions he submitted.

On this basis we cannot provide you with copies of the questions you have
requested because it is exempt information under section 40(2) of the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Section 40(2) FOIA states that information which constitutes personal data
as defined by the Data Protection Act 1998 is exempt from disclosure if
its release would contravene one or more of the data protection
principles. The information you requested is personal data because it
relates to and identifies a living individual. Disclosure of these
personal data would be unfair; therefore it would contravene the first
data protection principle which requires the Council to process personal
data fairly. This means that the information is exempt and will not be
provided.

If you are unhappy with the way we have handled your request you are
entitled to ask for an internal review. Any internal review will be
carried out by a senior member of staff who was not involved with your
original request. To ask for an internal review, contact
[1][email address] in the first instance.

If you are unhappy with the outcome of any internal review, you are
entitled to complain to the Information Commissioner. To do so, contact:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

[2]www.ico.gov.uk

01625 545 745

Yours sincerely,

Claire Naven

Claire Naven

Data Protection & Freedom of Information Officer

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

show quoted sections

Dear FOI Officer,

Thank you for your response.

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver

Dear FOI Officer,

Having thought about this further, it was reported in our usually accurate Stockport Express that the town hall protester was refused permission to ask his question because it was about planning and sub-judice. If it was about planning it should be open and in the public domain. All questions submitted by questioners go on the Council's website (along with their addresses and signatures in the past, so Data Protection issues are not always given the consideration they should be in Stockport), so if the gentleman asked the question, it was in full knowledge that it would be posted on the Council's website, so I doubt there are any genuine data protection issues involved here.

I would be grateful for your clarification here - was it a planning issue question or was it a personal question? If the latter, there is obviously no bar to releasing it as he would have been happy to have it released himself on the Council's website.

With warmest best wishes

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver

FOI Officer, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Dear Mrs Oliver,

I am writing in response to your email below.

As previously explained, the Council maintains that to discuss the content
of questions which have not been made public is unfair to the individuals
concerned; however if you wish to request an internal review, details of
how to do so were included in our original response to you.

Yours sincerely,

Claire Naven

Claire Naven

Data Protection & Freedom of Information Officer

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

show quoted sections

Dear FOI Officer,

Thank you, I shall. If the gentleman in question was happy for the questions to be put on the Council website and that can be inferred from his asking them (and I know he is because the Council put up his previous questions, name, address and signature for many months and refused to remove it when requested for Data Protection reasons until the police and the Information Commissioner were contacted), then I really can't see why the Council feels the need to be secretive about it.

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver

Ben Harris left an annotation ()

I think the Council expect you to explicitly ask for an internal review. This is contrary to the Secretary of State's code of practice, which states that "Any written reply from the applicant (including one transmitted by electronic means) expressing dissatisfaction with an authority's response to a request for information should be treated as a complaint," but I expect it will avoid confusion.

Sheila Oliver (Account suspended) left an annotation ()

Thank you Mr Harris for your kind help.

Best wishes

Sheila

Dear Ms Naven

Please see Mr Harris's kind comments. I would like to request an internal review please.

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver

FOI Officer, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

Dear Mrs Oliver,

I am writing in response to your request for an internal review in
relation to FOI request reference 2679. The internal review has been
carried out by Mike Halsall, Head of Legal Services. Please see his
response below.

Dear Mrs Oliver,

I have been asked to review the decision of the FOI Officer made on 11
March 2010. In that decision refusal to provide an answer to your question
was because of the exemption as to personal information under Section 40
(2) of the Act.

I have considered the various email correspondence between yourself and
the FOI Officer and have also looked at the content of the questions. I
concur with the opinion of the FOI Officer and feel that to disclose the
questions would have the effect of releasing personal information about
the individual raising the questions. I note your comments about the
author of the questions expecting the questions to be made public if they
had been accepted, however, they were not so accepted and would not have
been processed in the same was as acceptable questions.

Once information has been received by the Council it can only be processed
in the appropriate way. If the questions are not accepted, as in this
case, they cannot be processed in the same way as other questions and
cannot be processed in part. Public questions are submitted with the
expectation that they will be publicised if they are accepted. Once
published, members of the public can search for particular Council
meetings to see which questions have been submitted and then, who has
submitted them. However, there is no facility to search for a topic that a
named individual has asked questions about. Had the questions been
allowed, you would not be able to search for questions asked by a
particular individual and it is not within the expectations of those
submitting public questions that people can request details of what they,
by name, asked; this is a request targeted at a particular individual
rather than seeing which questions have been asked at a public meeting
dependent on the specific meeting you are interested in. As such, we
maintain that it would be unfair to process individuals' personal data in
this way i.e. by responding to specific requests about them.

I, therefore, cannot release any information from the questions nor
indicate the nature of the questions.

If you are unhappy with the outcome of this internal review, you can
complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. To do so, contact:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

[1]www.ico.gov.uk

01625 545 745

Yours sincerely,

Mike Halsall

Stockport Legal Services

Yours sincerely,

Claire Naven

Claire Naven

Data Protection & Freedom of Information Officer

Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council

show quoted sections

Dear Dear Mr Halsall

Thank you for your reply. It is a novelty to get an internal review of a refused FOI request. I note your apparently genuine concern about processing an individual's data in this way, but the Council was happy to display his name, address and signature on the Council's website long after this breach of the Data Protection Act was brought to its attention, despite Councillor Bodsworth being an Executive Councillor and a former employee of the Information Commission. We only managed to get these illegally displayed details removed from the Council's website the Monday afternoon following the full council meeting the previous Thursday at which it was drawn to the attention of the Executive members and then only when we had contacted the police and Information Commission for help.

If the Council is so very concerned about the well being and rights of Mr. Parnell, maybe they shouldn't have sent him repeatedly to prison for the alleged offence of assault with a sneeze of which he was acquitted at Crown Court and maybe the Council should be following the Crown Court judge's suggestion and sorting out the problem he has had with the Council instead of what has happened now - arresting him I believe for trying to obtain a council agenda document and sending him back to court. I recall the last time the Council tried to send him to court for the "offence" of using the town hall lavatory when he actually had written permission to do so from the Chief Executive, John Schulz.

I believe the question he asked was not about planning and sub-judice at all, and so shouldn't have been refused - it was about his treatment by Stockport's LibDem run council and would have embarrassed them. I personally think there is a criminal offence going on here of wasting valuable police time.

Yours

Sheila

Yours sincerely,

Sheila Oliver