Why have I been denied access to the St Andrews planning application file for 23 days?
I have now illegally been denied access to the planning application for St Andrews school for 23 days.
I rang your customer services at 11.25am on Monday 26th January 2015 and left a message requesting to see the file. After 24 hours of not being called back I went into Hove town hall and requested the file again in person. 48 hours after this request I received the following email
Katherine Elliott <[email address]>
date: 29 January 2015 at 09:50
subject: Request to View File
mailed-by: brighton-hove.gov.uk
Dear
Following your request to view the file BH2014/04147 for St Andrews School, Belfast St, I can confirm that is unavailable to view at this time as the file is needed by the case officer. The file should be available to view from early next week and you will receive an email when the file is at our Customer Services Centre in Hove Town Hall.
Regards
Katie Elliott
Planning Administrator
Development Control
Brighton & Hove City Council
Email: [email address]
Tel: 01273 292510
This continued denial of access to the planning application file is despite repeated attempts to gain access to the file through the Council complaints department (see formal complaint - BHC-017647)
Can you please provide me with the following:
1. A date that I can finally gain access to the complete file for the planning application?
2. A chronology, since the 26th January 2015, of which council officials have held the planning application file for the last 23 days, whilst denying me access to it?
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You and another person inspected the case file together on 08 January 2015. We have an email dated 09 January confirming that the file was viewed.
We have a record that on 26th January you made a request to see the file again. We also have a note that you went to Hove Town Hall on the 27th January to request the file.
On the 29th of January you were advised by Katherine Elliot by email that the file was unavailable at that time as the case officer was working on it. The case officer is Mr Huntley.
In w/c 09 February we had a request from a separate individual to inspect the file. Mr Huntley sent the file to our Customer Contact Centre on the 16 February and it was viewed by that person. Subsequently we also understand that the file was viewed on that date (i.e. 16 February) by a Mr Jacques.
We are very happy to make the file available to you at Hove Town Hall Contact centre.
Please telephone Mr Huntley (01273 292321) and he will make the file available to you to view at Hove Town Hall.
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WhatDoTheyKnow left an annotation ()
This request was made by an anonymous user through mySociety's now defunct FOI Register software (https://www.mysociety.org/2014/02/10/bri...). The integration has now been removed. The external URL for the request was http://foi.brighton-hove.gov.uk/requests....