Broken down into each of the past five financial years (or as far back as your information goes), please can you provide the below information in relation to Freedom of Information requests. For ease I have provided a table that can be used to respond to.
| 2016/17 | 2017/18 | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | |
| 1. Broken down per financial year how many FOI requests have you received? | 1360 | 1218 | 1389 | 1427 | 1207 |
| 2. Of which, broken down per financial year how many FOI requests have you refused by applying exemptions? | 105 | 101 | 129 | 115 |
47
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| 3. Broken down per financial year how many FOI requests have you responded to within time? | 1252 | 1153 | 1287 | 1295 | 896 |
| 4. Broken down per financial year how many FOI requests have you responded to outside of the agreed 20 days without an agreed extension? |
The system that Devon County Council uses to record freedom of information requests does not allow us to report this information easily. To confirm or deny if this information is held would involve an officer manually reviewing 6601 FOI case records to determine whether an agreed extension was in place for each request. We estimate that to carry out this exercise for all cases received in the last five financial years would take over 500 hours. Under the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 a public authority is not lawfully obliged to spend more than 18 hours locating, extracting or retrieving information in response to a freedom of information request. For this reason, we consider that Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act applies (cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit). In the interests of providing you with advice and assistance, the Council can confirm that whilst we are unable to provide a definitive response to this question, we can confirm that it is uncommon for the Council to agree extensions with members of the public prior to issuing a response to a freedom of information request. |
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| 5. Broken down per financial year how many FOI requests have you responded to outside of the agreed 20 days but with an agreed extension? |
The system that Devon County Council uses to record freedom of information requests does not allow us to report this information easily. To confirm or deny if this information is held would involve an officer manually reviewing 6601 FOI case records to determine whether an agreed extension was in place for each request. We estimate that to carry out this exercise for all cases received in the last five financial years would take over 500 hours. Under the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 a public authority is not lawfully obliged to spend more than 18 hours locating, extracting or retrieving information in response to a freedom of information request. For this reason, we consider that Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act applies (cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit). In the interests of providing you with advice and assistance, the Council can confirm that whilst we are unable to provide a definitive response to this question, we can confirm that it is uncommon for the Council to agree extensions with members of the public prior to issuing a response to a freedom of information request. |
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| 6. Broken down per financial year how many full time equivalent (FTE) staff do you employee managing FOIs? If you don’t employee any staff directly, who manages your FoI requests received for your organisation? |
Devon County Council does not employ officers with solely a Freedom of Information (FOI) remit. FOI requests are handled by the Council’s Access to Information Team.
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| 7. Broken down per financial year how many FOI requests have you charged for? | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
0 |
| 8. Broken down per financial year how much money have you charged for responding to FoI requests? | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
0 |
| 9. Broken down per financial year what is the average duration of time spent answering a request? |
This information is not held.
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| 10. Broken down per financial year how many complaints have been raised with the Information Commissioners Office relating to FOI requests your organisation has received? | 2 | 7 | 7 | 8 |
6 |
| 11. Broken down per financial year how many fines have you received relating to FoI requests? | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
0 |
| 12. Do you use a spreadsheet for tracking and managing FoI requests that are received? | No. | ||||