Land Registration
First-tier Tribunal
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Website:www.justice.gov.uk/tribunals
Mr Hump Balustrade
Mail to:
Our Ref: IR 83959 /
Date: 28 August 2013
Dear Mr Balustrade
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) – Outcome of Internal Review
Thank you for your Internal Review request dated 5 July 2013 regarding a Freedom of Information request in which you asked for:
“Please disclose under the FOI Act 2000 how much HMCTS were paid by Redbridge Borough Council in relation to Council Tax summonses issued in 2009/2010 & 2010/2011.
I trust this would easily fall within the FoI budget limitations as the information is not account specific, i.e., it would not be necessary to check through individual files."
Firstly, I should apologise for the delay in providing you with a response to your request for Internal Review.
The purpose of an Internal Review is to assess how your Freedom of Information request was handled in the first instance and to determine whether the original decision given to you was correct. This is an independent review: I was not involved in the original decision.
Internal review assessment
I have reassessed your case and after careful consideration I have concluded that the initial response that was sent to you was partially compliant with the requirements of the FOIA:
· Your request was made on 8 June 2013 and you received a response to it on 2 July 2013, 17 working days later, which met the statutory timeframe for response.
· The response sent to you on 2 July 2013, confirmed that HMCTS holds the information you asked for, however declined to supply the information under the section 12 exemption and explained the reasons for this.
· I can confirm that an enquiry into a search for information was carried out, which is where the issue of excessive cost was recognised. I believe this was the correct exemption to be applied. I am satisfied that the explanation as to how the records are held and the costs involved was sufficient. As explained previously, the law allows us to decline to answer FOI requests when we estimate it would cost us more than £600 (equivalent to 3½ working days’ worth of work, calculated at £25 per hour) to identify, locate, extract, and then provide the information that has been asked for. A breakdown of costs involved in answering your FOI request was correctly calculated to equate to 67 hours work which exceeds the cost limit mentioned above. I can confirm that to breakdown the figure of £58,575.00 (the total fees received by Barkingside Magistrates’ Court in relation to Council Tax summons for the period of April 2010 to March 2011) to ascertain the total sum paid by Redbridge Borough Council we would be required to interrogate our manual files, which would also take an estimated 67 hours work and therefore exceeds the costs limit.
· As part of this review, I can also confirm that the council tax files for period 2009/2010 are no longer held as they have been destroyed in accordance with the HMCTS file retention policy.
· However, I have found that the response did not fully satisfy the requirements of section 16 of the FOIA (advice and assistance). This is because, although you were given the contact address for the London Borough of Redbridge who may be able to provide you with the information, you were not informed of how you may refine your request to bring it within the cost limit, for example by reducing the timeframe of your request. Unfortunately, due to the manner in which the information in this case is held I am unable to provide advice and assistance on how to refine your FOI request given the same number of records will need to be manually searched even if the timeframe of the request is reduced. Nevertheless, you may wish to consider resubmitting a refined request as noted above. However, please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a refined request will fall within the FOIA cost limit. A refined request may also be refused if the information requested engages one or more of the other exemptions under the FOIA, for example, section 32 (court records) or section 40 (personal information).
Conclusion
In conclusion, although the response you received on 2 July 2013 did not fully satisfy the requirements of section 16 of the FOIA, I am satisfied that that the section 12 cost exemption was correctly applied and the response is hereby upheld.
You have the right to appeal our decision if you think it is incorrect. Details can be found in the ‘How to Appeal’ section attached at the end of this letter.
Disclosure Log
You can also view information that the MoJ has disclosed in response to previous Freedom of Information requests. Responses are anonymised and published on our on-line disclosure log which can be found on the MoJ website:
http://www.justice.gov.uk/information-access-rights/foi-requests/latest-moj-disclosure-log
The published information is categorised by date.
Yours sincerely
Gurvir Kaur
Delivery Manager
How to Appeal
Information Commissioner’s Office
If you remain dissatisfied after an internal review decision, you have the right to apply to the Information Commissioner’s Office. The Commissioner is an independent regulator who has the power to direct us to respond to your request differently, if he considers that we have handled it incorrectly.
You can contact the Information Commissioner’s Office at the following address:
Information Commissioner’s Office,
Wycliffe House,
Water Lane,
Wilmslow,
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Internet address: https://www.ico.gov.uk/Global/contact_us.aspx
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