letter of exemption

Question

our last clerk was provided with a letter stating all legal costs, fines, restitution costs would be covered by the council we have limited insurance but no gte they would cover these at disclosure due to the number of deliberate actions taken by the clerk hence i suspect the insurer would reserve there position and with draw. cases cover deliberate refusal to disclose under FOI request, destruction of records when a gdpr request was received , failure to comply with standing orders on multiple occasions , failure to act as a trustee refusal to supply key documents to fellow trustees in order to make informed decision

the financial liability is un known but potentially just one case could be circa £40,000  in our parish accounts and AGAR i assume we must put a value on these items written down after say 3 years   any ideas as we are a small parish and already low reserves

Answer 1

You can't put a value on something that you have no idea if it will ever arise or if it does what the costs might be...  Are you suggesting there "might" be a fine from the ICO at some point in the future?  Do you have any indication of likelihood of this?

Who provided the (previous?) clerk with an exemption, on what basis and how can that even be valid?

You could do with a re=phrase of the question / statement really...

Comments

we have proof that clerk destroyed records after recieving a GDPR request ,also with held documents from an FOI request , told trustees and councillors particular records did not exist then we found them on clerks pc ,clerk also lied re emails and knowledge of social housing to residents and councillors alike seens  a mixture of failure under standing orders plus information commisioner  so even if only half came to fruition the legal costs alone could exceed £25,000 our council does not meet the capital requirements at present any further potenetial seems to agrevate the situation not pleasant but i suspect our agar report will be affected

Answer 2

I don't see how a former member of staff could obtain said assurances (akin to a Trump Pardon whereby an individual seeks total immunity with a sort of blanket protection covering all manner of sins just in case). The resolution (presumably exists) to offer such letter validity is questionable at best.

You need to establish facts and resolve a clear way forward having taken specialist advice (including principal authority, ICO & other relevant parties). From what you discribed does not sound like at that point where reporting figures and very early stages in terms of discovery so at this point speculative.

Answer 3

Deliberate refusal to provide FOI information / destroying information that has been requested would be a criminal offence committed personally by the clerk. Therefore it would be the clerk that would get fined.

A clerk that committed this offence was fined £400 and made to pay victim surcharge of £40 and legal costs of £1493.