FoI correspondence on Overage. Earliest first.
26.6.16. Standard FOI request for details of "Overage" agreements in last 12 years
5.7.16. Lewisham to NJH
We apply Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 'Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit' to your request.
Section 12 states 1) Section 1 (1) does not oblige a public authoirty to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.
This acts as a refusal notice. This information is not held in a readily accessible format. It is estimated that the cost of locating, retrieving and collating the information would cost in excess of £450 (the set limit) and therefore exceeds the 'appropriate level' as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
Costs for staff time, ie staff retrieving and collating information are set at £25 per hour and this task would require us to spend more than 18 hours of staff time on preparing the relevant information. You are able to make a payment so that this task could be undertaken. You may also modify your request to reduce the cost of this task. Please contact us if you wish to proceed with one of these options.
There is no central record of disposals where an overage agreement was entered into. These disposals are not distinguished from all other disposals that we deal with. To identify cases for the last 12 years would require examining each case individually after retrieving the files. We estimate that there are over 100 such cases in the last 12 years. We estimate that it would take a minimum of 20 minutes to examine each file once it had been retrieved. Therefore, we estimate that it would take at least 2000 (20x100) minutes to process your request with the appropriate limit being 18 hours or 1080 minutes.
You are free to use the information provided for your own purposes, including any non-commerical research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use, for example commercial publication, requires the permission of the copyright holder. You may apply for permission to re-use this information by submitting a request to foi@lewisham.gov.uk
You have a right of appeal against this response. If you wish to appeal you must do so in writing to the Corporate Information Manager at the following address:
If you wish to appeal you must do so in writing to the Corporate Information Manager at the following address:
Corporate Information Team, London Borough of Lewisham, 1st Flr, Town Hall Chambers
Rushey Green, Catford. London SE6 4RY
Or foi@lewisham.gov.uk
Yours sincerely, Daniel Ellis
Customer Caseworker
Daniel.Ellis@lewisham.gov.uk
17.7.16 NH to Lewisham
Your Reference 368487
I refer to the above FoI request and your refusal to provide information on overage agreements on the grounds of cost.
I am convinced it is in the public interest for disclosure to be made and that such a reason for refusal is not justified where public money is involved when land owned by the public is sold. It is in the interests of Councillors and the public that such information is available – as it is with other (though not all) inner London Boroughs who have responded to similar requests.
Please therefore treat this letter as an appeal to be dealt with as a complaint through the Council’s Internal Review procedure.
Yours truly, Nicholas Harding
[WHAT THIS MEANS IS OVERALL COST ESTIMATED TO BE 20 MINS PER FILE, 100 FILES (FOR ALL 12 YRS), £25 PER HOUR. MEANS 3 FILES AN HOUR, SO 33 1/3 HOURS IE £833.33. LIMIT IS 18 HOURS SO EXCESS IS £383.33]
19.7.16 Lewisham to NH
Dear Mr Harding
Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000
Reference No: 368487- Appeal
We acknowledge receipt of your appeal of our response to your information request, reference number 368487. We will now undertake a review of our original response and endeavour to respond to you within 20 working days.
Yours sincerely, Maria Kaminski
9.8.16 Lewisham to NH
Dear Mr Harding
Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000
Reference No: 368487 – Appeal response
We have now considered your appeal of our original full response to you. Your request was for information regarding overage agreements. In summary, we uphold our decision to apply S12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, 'Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit' to your request.
Overage disposals are not distinguished from all the other disposals that the Council deal with. The individual completion memos to property records state that an overage agreement was entered into but there is no central record held solely for overage agreements.
According to the Information Commissioner’s Office’s guidance and regulations the following criteria can be used when applying S12 to a request:
The Regulations allow a public authority to charge the following activities at a flat rate of £25 per hour of staff time:
• determining whether the information is held;
• locating the information, or a document which may contain the information;
• retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the information; and
• extracting the information from a document containing it.
Our search would involve initially searching through our case management system to locate all disposal files, reviewing the results to discount disposals where we can say with certainty no overage agreement was entered into (e.g. right to buy sales, enfranchisements, freehold reversions, small pieces of land etc.). After this task is carried out a manual search would have to be made to retrieve the paper files from storage which is estimated as at least 100 files. These would then have to be interrogated individually to retrieve the information requested. These searches would take in excess of 18 hours and cost in excess of £450 and therefore evoke the application of S12 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 'Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit' to your request.
We hope you find this response to your review satisfactory. However, you have a further right of appeal against this decision, which you can do so in writing, stating your reasons to the regulating body, the Information Commissioner's Office.
Contact details: http://www.ico.gov.uk/ or 0303 123 1113 or Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.
Yours sincerely
Wendy Stevens
Corporate Information Team