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Upon receipt of an FOI, your duties are to:

(1) Inform the requester as  to whether you hold the requested information and if so;

(2) communicate that information to the requester, unless of course, an exemption applies.

 

There are 20 school days to respond - at this time of year, we recommend trying to ensure this is dealt with before the school holidays. Whilst that might be less that 20 school days, consider whether you want to be dealing with this request upon your return in the new school year.

 

 

The Freedom of Information Act ( FOI) only covers the recorded information you hold.

 

This means you do not have to make up an answer or find the information from elsewhere if you do not already have the relevant information in recorded form. Therefore, the first question to ask yourself is do we hold the information being requested? For any question where you are sure you do not hold the information your response should be " We can confirm we do not hold this information". However, you will need to be satisfied that you have carried out a thorough search/ know for definite which has enabled you to conclude this.

 

Remember, though, even when in receipt of a valid request as such, it is not always necessary for the information to be provided. For example, this request may well be estimated to exceed the cost so could be refused using s12 of  the Act- See the following:

 

If you estimate that it would cost more than £450 (or 18 hours) to provide information you can refuse the request or issue a fees notice for the full cost. 

• I can see the requests concern dates as far back as 2018. Not being aware of your records management status(i.e I am not aware of how you record this data) it may be possible for you to refuse to answer the request if you estimate the cost of complying with the request will exceed the £450 limit or 18 hours - e.g to locate the information would involve one member of staff looking through 1000 files. It would take 2 minutes for the member of staff to extract the relevant information from each file. Therefore we estimate that it would take 1000x2mins= approximately 33 hours. 33x£25=£830
• the cost of finding out whether you hold the information will exceed the £450 limit ( eg if you have to do an extensive search in a number of locations)

The regulations state the following activities can be considered in calculating the cost;

• establishing whether the information is held
• locating the information
• extracting the information

Consideration, redaction or reading time or time spent consulting with 3rd parties cannot be taken into account.

 

We are also happy to share the advice from Brighton and Hove relating to the specific requests (this is taken from the document that they have distributed to schools and used with their permission:

 

The requests:

1. Please send me copies/scans/digital files that record individual racist/religious incidents/bullying incidents in terms of numbers of incidents and their description (attached) as written down by staff on logs or forms. I am interested to see these incident/bullying incident records covering an academic year period from autumn term 2018 to date or by calendar if that is how you record (in which case 2018 to date). I would like to see how descriptions of incidents look in each of your year groups.

This request and request number 3 refers to your incident logs for racist and religiously motivated bullying and incidents. These may be logged on SIMS, CPOMS or be in paper format.

You will want to redact personal information including school name and all other names. You will want to consider if in the information itself there is any other information that could identify a young person or member of staff and redact this

Possibly relevant exemptions:

Exemptions 30 & 31 could be applied to any ongoing police or local authority involvement in a case to not include that record.

Exemption 38 - Health and safety – disclosure of any information that could put a person at risk – could be applied to not include recent incidents or ongoing incidents

Exemption 40 could be applied if completing the request results in an unjustified level of disruption (vexatious request). The school would need to prove this high level of disruption and this may therefore only be relevant to larger schools.

Exemption 36 (effective conduct of public affairs) could be applied could apply if you thought that disclosing this information for it to be made public in a book would reduce the number of times pupils and students report incidents. This is a qualified exemption so would need to apply by your Monitoring Officer.

2. The aggregate numbers you may also record (relating to the above) either via SIMS or your own log.

This seems to be asking for a total number, but it is not clear whether this is a sum of all incidents over the period since 2018 or something different.

A question requesting further clarification could be asked this would put the deadline for the return of the Freedom of Information on hold until the response has been received.

3. Indicate to me if there have been any disciplinary or other actions following incidents (including exclusions, police involvement or merely supportive actions re: ‘unwitting’ incidents (either victimless or where there have been undertones that mean it is still racist).

Freedom of Information requests do not require you to create information, so this will be what is written on logs with information redacted or exemptions applied as described above.

4. Has the school taken up/soon to take up BHCC’s suggested ‘Racial Literacy 101’ training? If so, will sessions be for heads, certain staff, governors or all staff? (pupils too one day?)

Suggested responses depending on the situation in your school:

A member of staff has / Staff have attended Brighton & Hove City Council’s Racial Literacy 101 training.

No one from our school has attended BHCC’s ‘Racial Literacy 101 training.

We commissioned racial literacy training for our staff/governors.

We would not deliver the same training delivered to staff/governors to pupils and students. Their learning needs are different.

We are awaiting further information on BHCC’s training offer under the anti-racist schools’ strategy before deciding what meets the needs of our school community.

 

The FOIA requires the school to inform the requester whether it holds the information specified in the request (known as the duty to confirm or deny). Section 40(5) of FOIA provides certain exemptions from the duty to confirm or deny whether personal data is held.

It is our view that given the background and detail of this request complying with the duty to confirm the school holds the requested information would in itself disclose sensitive or potentially damaging information that falls under the personal data exemption i.e personal data about third parties. Especially as the numbers of specific incidents may be low. Therefore, in relation to questions 1-3 our view is that the  school's response should read as follows;

"We the School are not obliged to confirm or deny whether we hold the information you have requested as if held, this would relate to personal information. Section 40(5) of the Act provides that there is no duty to confirm or deny whether we hold the information.

 The fact section 40(5) of the Act has been cited, should not be taken as an indication that the information you requested is or is not held by the school. The terms of this exemption in the FOIA mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for us to reveal whether or not the information is held."

 

We also refer you to our earlier article on FOI requests and the FOI Best Practice Area, both of which reference the FOI response template letter.

Freedom of Information Best Practice Area

Freedom of Information Requests (blog)

If there are any specifics of your response that you need help with, then please log the FOI and email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Suggested response format (using the guidance above in your response:

 

Dear [requester’s name],

Thank you for the request you made on [date of request], seeking the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000: 

1. Please send me copies/scans/digital files that record individual racist/religious incidents/bullying incidents in terms of numbers of incidents and their description (attached) as written down by staff on logs or forms. I am interested to see these incident/bullying incident records covering an academic year period from autumn term 2018 to date or by calendar if that is how you record (in which case 2018 to date). I would like to see how descriptions of incidents look in each of your year groups.

We the School are not obliged to confirm or deny whether we hold the information you have requested as if held, this would relate to personal information. Section 40(5) of the Act provides that there is no duty to confirm or deny whether we hold the information.

The fact section 40(5) of the Act has been cited, should not be taken as an indication that the information you requested is or is not held by the school. The terms of this exemption in the FOIA mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for us to reveal whether or not the information is held.

 

2. The aggregate numbers you may also record (relating to the above) either via SIMS or your own log.

We the School are not obliged to confirm or deny whether we hold the information you have requested as if held, this would relate to personal information. Section 40(5) of the Act provides that there is no duty to confirm or deny whether we hold the information.

The fact section 40(5) of the Act has been cited, should not be taken as an indication that the information you requested is or is not held by the school. The terms of this exemption in the FOIA mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for us to reveal whether or not the information is held.

 

3. Indicate to me if there have been any disciplinary or other actions following incidents (including exclusions, police involvement or merely supportive actions re: ‘unwitting’ incidents (either victimless or where there have been undertones that mean it is still racist).

We the School are not obliged to confirm or deny whether we hold the information you have requested as if held, this would relate to personal information. Section 40(5) of the Act provides that there is no duty to confirm or deny whether we hold the information.

The fact section 40(5) of the Act has been cited, should not be taken as an indication that the information you requested is or is not held by the school. The terms of this exemption in the FOIA mean that we do not have to consider whether or not it would be in the public interest for us to reveal whether or not the information is held.

 

4. Has the school taken up/soon to take up BHCC’s suggested ‘Racial Literacy 101’ training? If so, will sessions be for heads, certain staff, governors or all staff? (pupils too one day?)

[Add your response here  e.g. as per Brighton and Hove suggestions:

A member of staff has / Staff have attended Brighton & Hove City Council’s Racial Literacy 101 training.

No one from our school has attended BHCC’s ‘Racial Literacy 101 training.

We commissioned racial literacy training for our staff/governors.

We would not deliver the same training delivered to staff/governors to pupils and students. Their learning needs are different.

We are awaiting further information on BHCC’s training offer under the anti-racist schools’ strategy before deciding what meets the needs of our school community.]

 

This is to confirm that we have received your request. You should receive a response from us by [insert date that’s 20 school days away from when they submitted the request, or 60 working days if that’s sooner].

If you are not satisfied that we have complied with the Act in responding to your request, you can request an Internal Review. Please get in touch by [phone, email or other] explaining what it is you would like us to review.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of the Internal Review you can appeal to the Information commissioner.

• Call 0303 123 1113
• Or write to The Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF

 

Kindest regards,

[Your name]

[Organisation]