/ Your ref:
Date: / 15 October 2014
Our ref: / LBH/3489114
Direct dial:
Email: /
Dear MsChapman,
Internal Review of theFreedom of Information (FOI) Act LBH/3370214
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to review the response we have sent to your Freedom of Information request. I apologise for the delay in responding to you.
Your original FOI request dated 8 August 2014 asked:
1 - How many Consultants has the council contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014)? This includes contracts which commenced prior to this date but were active during this period.
2 - The names and or companies of the Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014)?
3 - The role of each Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014)?
4 - How many Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014) have been issued Haringey council ID badges, job titles, what those job titles are, whether those are actual posts in the council, why you have contracted a Consultant and not employed someone to those posts.
5 - How long the Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014) have been with the council?
6 - Please can you inform me of how many Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014) are on £150 per a day or more?
7 - Please can you tell me the day rate of the highest paid Consultant, what they do and how long they have been doing it?
8 - Please can you tell me how many payroll positions are now filled with people who were once Consultants in the past 3 years?
9 - Please can you tell me the quantity of people who were once paid for via a recruitment agency or on the payroll but are now being paid for either directly through an sole trade business or a business where the person contracted is the Director?
10 - How many Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014) are or have managed council paid payroll staff?
11 - Please can you inform me of how much tax and NI the council could have paid if they employed the Consultants the council has contracted with from 1st Jan 2014 to date (8th Aug 2014) who have or had been doing the same job for more than 3 months?
You requested an internal review on10 September 2014 stating: “I feel the council are deliberately withholding and or creatively editing information to withhold the truth from taxpayers.
This FOI was 2 days late. Oddly yesterday the local paper ran with a story that basically answered this FOI. This story can be found here ”
I have reviewed your original request and our response, my findings are below.
Regarding your questions 1-7
The report published in the Tottenham and Wood Green Independent was the report for the Corporate Committee meeting in June 2014 which covered January- March 2014.
I agree that the information provided to you does not mach the information provided to the Corporate Committee in June. The response to your request, on 13 August 2014 by Carole Engwell, Manager, HR Management Information Team, was based on the information available at the time of the response.
The problem in responding to your request was that the information you requested is not held centrally but by each Service/Team individually. Collating the information has always been problematic and extremely time consuming; and in the hindsight perhaps a more through attempt to collate the information should have been done, however, this was not an attempt to withhold information or to mislead you.
Following your FOI request and complaint is has been decided that a centralised record of Consultants will be created incorporating the information you have requested. This record will be published shortly on our website.
I apologise for not being able to provide you with a definitive answer immediately.
Regards your questions 8, 9 10,
As explained in our initial response; the previous employment status is not recorded as a searchable field in HR records. Contrary to your suggestion it is not possible to cross reference the HR /payroll records with ID records within the allocated time limit of 18 hours.
Section 12 of the Act allows public authorities to refuse requests for information where the cost of dealing with them would exceed the appropriate limit, which for local government is set at £450. This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 18 hours in determining whether the department holds the information, locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
Regards your question 11. This information is not held.
The Freedom of Information Act gives people the right to access information that is held on record by public authorities. If we have records containing the information that you are seeking, we must provide a copy of those records to you (unless one of the exemptions within the Act applies). If we do not have the information on record, there is no obligation to provide it to you. We are not obliged to create records simply because an FOI request has been received.
With regards to the response being two days late:
Your request was received on 8 August 2014 and the response was due by 8 September 2014.
The response was sent initially on 13 August but to a wrong email address;
From: Engwell Carole
Sent: 13 August 2014 11:06
To:
Cc: Clay Lesley
Subject: Haringey FOI Response
You queried the late response on 10 September and Lesley Clay, Feedback Review Officer, forwarded the response to you on the same day.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 Section 1 (1) states:
Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled—
(a) to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request, and
(b) if that is the case, to have that information communicated to him.
Section 10(1) states:
A public authority must comply with section 1(1) promptly and in any event not later than the twentieth working day following the date of receipt.
Therefore we have failed to comply with the sections 1 (1) and 10 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000as we have failed to respond to your request within the 20 working daysand I apologise for this failure to respond to your FOI request in time.
I hope that you are satisfied with my response to your complaint. If you are dissatisfied, you may complain to the Information Commissioner, who may be able to help you. Please note that if you wish to refer this case to the Information Commissioner, they ask that you do so within two months of our response to you.
You can contact the Commissioner at:
Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Email:
Website:
Yours sincerely
Sirkku Pietikainen
Feedback Review Officer