Reference: Requests for Information Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000

Dear Mr Sherman

Reference: Requests for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000

I write further to the three separate requests for information submitted to this authority on 10, 21 and 28 June 2011 respectively. As each of the enquiries is in relation to printing services used by Tendring District Council (TDC), please accept this communication as a combined response.

Firstly, Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) provides that a public authority does not have to comply with a request for information if the cost of compliance exceeds the “appropriate limit”. The Fees Regulations state that this cost limit is £450 for local authorities (calculated at £25 per hour). In addition, the Fees Regulations allow for two or more requests to one public authority to be aggregated for the purposes of calculating costs if they are:

• by one person who appears to the public authority to be acting in pursuance of a campaign
• for the same or similar information; and
• the subsequent request/s is/are received by the public authority within 60 working days of the previous request.

In view of the extensive back catalogue of correspondencebetween yourself and numerous staff within TDC on matters connected to the Print Unit and the outsourcing of print work, I must advise thatI do consider the three recent enquiries to represent “pursuance of a campaign”. Furthermore, whilst the three requests are not seeking identical information, as they are all concerned with the printing function, I believe it could be reasonably argued that they should be aggregated. Certainly, due to the level of detail that is being sought, to comply with your requests would involve a significant amount of officer time, likely to far exceed the 18 hour/£450 appropriate limit. However,no formalcalculationof the cost of compliance has been undertaken for reasons I shall proceed to explain below.

Your e-mail of 10 June 2011 does not specify the period over which data is required which makes it impossible to make any reasonable estimation. In this instance, electronic interrogation of our financial systems would provide incomplete data and therefore, a manual review of individual records would be necessary to present an accurate position. As I hope you can appreciate, this activity alone would be a considerably time consuming exercise.

With regards to your e-mail of 21 June 2011, in which you request “a complete break down of costings of what the TDC Print Unit costs to run”, may I refer you to the e-mail from Richard Barrett, Deputy Head of Financial Services, dated 3 February 2011, which sets out this information in relation to 2009/2010 and should be of assistance.

Turning now to your e-mail of 28 June 2011, again there is no reference made to any particular timeframe which as previously mentioned, does not permit us to make any reasonable estimation of the cost of compliance. Also, you will be aware from earlier exchanges with Mr Barrett (namely his e-mails dated 5 August 2010 and 27January 2011), we are not prepared to divulge details of those companies who have quoted unsuccessfully. You will recall that Mr Barrett’s letter dated 30 January 2006addressed the issues of both quotation requests and print work placement with a particular supplier.I can confirm that the Council’s position remains unchanged on either matter.

Notwithstanding the above, although this letter should be viewed as a formal refusal of your requests for information, in this instance, the Council does not intend to rely on Section 12 of the FOIA but ratherSection 14 (1) - Vexatious Request.

In deciding whether to treat the three requests in question as vexatious, the history and context of your enquiries have been considered and unfortunately, I have concluded that these latest e-mails do appear to form a wider pattern of behaviour that make them vexatious. The volume and frequency of correspondence from you has been taken into consideration and there is a clear attempt to revisit matters that have already been debated.

In addition to the high volume of correspondence with the Deputy Head of Financial Services, as stated in your e-mail of 28 June 2011, the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council and the Head of Legal Services (to whom the Print Unit reports) and Chief Executive have all willingly met with you to discuss the concerns that you have repeatedly raised. The fact that you did not find either of these meetings constructive regrettably suggests thatyour longstanding dissatisfaction with TDC’s approach to external printing is unlikely to be resolved.

As explained earlier, to comply with these requests would impose a significant burden on TDC in terms of both expense and distraction.

In closing, I hope I have adequatelyexpressedthe Council’s position in this matter. In accordance with our FOIA Complaints Procedure, ( may submit a written appeal against this decision directly to me, requesting an internal review of the response you have received.

Yours sincerely

Alison Rowlands
Corporate Information Manager