Your Ref:
Our Ref: FOI/206492 APPEAL /
Mr James Marshall
Email: / Date:12September 2012
Dear Mr Marshall
Freedom of Information request 206492 APPEAL
I am writing to you about your request for a review of a Freedom of Information 2000 (FOIA) response dated 2 August2012 and your original information request made on 2 July 2012
Your request has been assigned to me to investigate and review and the result of my review is contained in this letter.
I have investigated the Council’s response made to you on 2 July2012.
The information you requested was as follows:
- A copy of the LDL contract documentation, including Terms and Conditions, schedules, Joint Venture Agreement. I accept that commercially sensitive details such as pricing may be redacted
- A copy of the Council's documentation which details the governance arrangements surrounding this contract. I assume that you provide policy guidance to officers to avoid conflicts of interest
- A copy of the last 3 years' financial records for the joint venture. I am particularly interested in understanding how the joint venture benefits the Council, so any detail showing profit-sharing over the past 3 years would be particularly beneficial.
We provided the following response:
- Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act states that public authorities do not have to provide information to applicants where it is reasonably accessible to an applicant by other means. The Council holds information which is caught by your request but believes that in this case the information you have requested is reasonably accessible to you by other means, specifically the following link:
- This is contained within the body of the contract
- Liverpool City Council does not hold this information; this information may be held by BT/Liverpool Direct Limited. However as they are not subject to FOIA there is no requirement for them to provide this information.
For the purposes of clarity I will be conducting our internal review based on the following points which were provided after clarification on the 31 July 2012:
- Point 3 is unacceptable. I have looked through the material which you kindly provided in response to question 1, and would note the following statements in the Joint Venture Agreement:
. . . the Company shall:
7.3.2 provide each Shareholder within 10 Business Days of the end of the 3 month period ("quarter") ending on 30 June, 30 September, 31 December and 31 March in each year, with unaudited management accounts for such quarter in a form and content acceptable to the Shareholders including a profit and loss account and balance sheet for the period ending on that quarter and a cashflow forecast for of 12 months from the end of each quarter;
7.5 The "B" Shareholder will, not later than 30 days before the beginning of each Financial Year of the Company, consider and seek to approve the relevant draft profit and loss account budget, cashflow projections and balance sheet forecast and the proposed draft Business Plan and shall forthwith supply a copy of the documents to the "A" Shareholder once the same have been approved by the "B" Shareholder
It follows that the Council must hold the information requested by myself in my question 3. You must be mistaken in stating that this information is not held. Please answer question 3.
In order to provide a response to your original request I have revisited our original response and liaised with colleagues. I can now confirm the following in response to your correspondence above:
- The City Council maintains its position that it does not hold the information requested. However, further investigation has confirmed that Liverpool Direct Limited’s annual report to the City Council contains an extract from LDL’s full accounts. This can be accessed via the following link:
The relevant information is contained from page 38 onwards.
The full accounts can be accessed via
In light of this I can confirm that the City Council acknowledges it should have provided more information in its original response.
As I have now reviewed your original response, you have exhausted the Council’s appeals process for the purposes of this request. Accordingly, should you remain dissatisfied, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, via the following:
Website is and the postal address and telephone numbers are:-
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Fax number 01625 524 510
Telephone 01625 545745
Email – (they advise that their email is not secure)
Yours sincerely
Mr Kevin Symm
Senior Information Officer
Information Team, Legal Services Municipal Buildings Dale Street
Liverpool L2 2DH
Telephone 0151 225 3132 Fax 0151 225 2392