/ 24 June 2015
Dear Mr Surinder
Re: Request for Internal Review under Freedom of Information Act 2000 – case [ref 764001]
Thank you for your request for an internal review, received 27 April 2015. We have now completed our investigations into your request for an internal review with the assistance of the departments concerned. Please accept our apologies for the delay in responding to you on this matter.
Your original request for information (RFI)
Your RFI was received on 1 April 2015 and responded to on 8 April 2015. Please find a copy of H&F’s RFI response attached.
We have extracted your internal review questions and emboldened and italicised these below. Your full request for an internal review is attached.
“I am writing to request an internal review of Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Income and revenue data'.
I have received some of the information in my original request however in relation to bank account information for parking fines I received the response below:
"We don’t permit payment of parking fines directly into our bank accounts. "
I do appreciate that you do not permit payments directly however that was not my question.
My question was simply for you to provide the account details - exactly the same as those requested for council tax, housing and business rates which you have supplied”
Our investigation
We have based our internal review on the following interpretation of your request:
· That the information requested was not supplied
· That response was not compliant with Freedom of Information Act
In order to complete our internal review, we contacted the Finance team who were the service areas responsible for collating and redacting the information held by HUFF in relation to your request and for sending out the response. We have addressed each of your points below:
Findings
Money collected following Penalty Charge Notices (PCN) are handled is through a strict auditable process.
PCN’s have a number of variables that affect the amount of money due including a discount for early payment.
It is vital that all payments are made through a single process and not paid directly into an account this could lead to individuals being issued with charge notices for late payments. As they will not be linked to the PCN system.
This was included in the original response, however when refusing to supply information under the FOI Act there is a requirement to apply one of the exemptions, or state that the information is not held.
In this case the information is held, and therefore an exemption should have been applied.
In this case exemption is
“Section 33(2) - Audit functions
(2) Information held by a public authority to which this section applies is exempt information if its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the exercise of any of the authority’s functions in relation to any of the matters referred to in subsection (1)”.
As this is a qualified exemption a public interest test has been performed.
It is determined that the public Interest to withhold the information outweighs the public interest for disclosure for the following reasons:
1. Should the information be disclosed into the public domain it could lead to confusion as to where money should be paid. This would then lead to improper applications of penalty charge notices.
2. For the purpose of transparency the application of PCN process must be fully auditable and therefore any payments made separately would jeopardise the audit process.
3. Failing to be able to audit processes correctly could lead to both reputational and financial costs to the Council. which require additional spending of public funds in dealing with the issues caused. The Council has a duty under the Local Government Act 1972 to protect public funds.
Internal review outcome
The conclusion of this review is as follows
1. In relation to not supplying the information requested.
Your complaint is not upheld on the grounds that following this investigation it is clear that to release this information could jeopardize our ability to audit the PCN process and therefore it is in the public interest to withhold this information.
2. The response was not compliant with the Freedom of Information Act 2000
This matter is Upheld as when refusing to supply the information the appropriate refusal notice must be supplied under the Act citing an appropriate exemption.
If you feel dissatisfied with the handling of your request for an internal review under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, you have the right to appeal to the Information Commissioner at:
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, CheshireSK9 5AF
Telephone: 0303 123 1113
Website: http://www.ico.org.uk.
There is no charge for making an appeal.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Hutton
Information Governance Project Manager
NOTE: Please do not edit the subject line when replying to this email.
Please contact H& with all new requests for information.
Ed Garcez
Chief Information Officer – Finance & Corporate Services