internal review

Question

I Have asked my town council to undertake an internal review.  This has been a on going issue with the council deliberately not providing the information (as they know they have over spent). On asking for a internal review. Thank you Edward

The town clerk has stated that
I have been instructed by the Chairman not to reply to you any further for the following reasons:

1. All payments are publicly available in the 'gold' coloured pages that list all Town Council invoices so you already have the information. The Post Office costs are designated as such on the 'gold' coloured pages. No doubt you have used this publicly available information to arrive at the figures you quote below. All such costs have been approved unanimously for payment by the Town Council with no objections from any councillor.
2. You are not clear about what you want - you have asked for 'Post office expenses'. Is this set-up costs? Or is it running costs? Or is it both?
3. The request repeats a previous request which you have had an answer to.
4. The request takes up staff time and is costly at a time when we are operating without a key member of staff as the Deputy Town Clerk has left and not been replaced yet.

Answer 1

Is the Clerk correct in saying that you have access to the information?

Comments

i believe i have all the figures but I am not 100% convinced.  The issue is the clark is saying that he is at £14K (he stated this amount at the last town council meeting) I am at £21k. He is being very stubborn.

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One thing about FOI requests is not allowing any “ wriggle room”

How about asking this question ?

At the last Town Council meeting it was claimed that £14,000 was spent on xxxxx in the period from xxxxx to xxxxx please supply me with a breakdown of this figure
I have tried as suggested using the publicly available information but cannot arrive at the same figure as yours

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FOI Section 21 carries an exemption for information that is reasonably accessible by other means, so the council need not respond if it has already published this information elsewhere. It can also refuse a request that repeats a previous request by the same person. That appears to be what the council has done with the clerk's written response.