After a series of communications between me
the council’s chief executive and the council’s senior legal officer, I have achieved
a situation where a bit more of the documentation is in the public domain. This is what they sent me:
This one is called by the council “Pleasurama
Unredacted Information”
And this one “Pleasurama Redacted Information”
My request to the council was for them to
send me a list of all the documents the council hold on The Royal Sands Development
on the Pleasurama Site in Ramsgate, that they wouldn’t send me and for them to
send me everything they hold that they were now prepared to release under foi
legislation.
What I actually got was the pdf files,
links above and the following email.
“Ref No: 48746 / 2328573
Dear Mr. Child
Thank you for your information request
received on 25 February 2013 where you requested information held by the
Council concerning the former Pleasurama site in Ramsgate.
I confirm that the Council holds
information relevant to your request. However it declines to provide all of
that information to you for the following reasons:
1.
Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 authorises the Council
to withhold information that is available to the requestor by other means. For
example, the Planning application files relating to the Pleasurama site are
public documents that may be inspected at the Gateway in Margate during normal Council office opening
hours. However, I have nevertheless included a partial transcript of the
Council meeting of 5 December 2002 together with some other information
relating to a presentation given by the developer to the Council, all of which
I recovered from the Planning file. In addition, all the open reports since
2003 concerning the Pleasurama site are available on the Council's web site via
the Modern Gov Committee System.
2.
Section 41 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Some information
has either been redacted from the
information now disclosed or withheld in its entirety as the Council remains under an
enforceable duty of confidence in
respect of it. This is an absolute exemption, meaning that the Council
is not required to consider the public
interest in deciding whether or not to withhold
the information.
3
Section 42 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 - A sub-paragraph in
an exempt report that I have concluded
can now enter the public domain has been redacted due to legal professional privilege. However, Section 42
is a qualified exemption subject to a public interest test. In this regard, it
is my decision that the public interest lies in witholding this information.
This is because the courts have recognised that there is a substantial public
interest in the maintenance of legal professional privilege which I consider
outweights any competing public interest in disclosure.
4.
Finally, I have not enclosed copies of the Development Agreement as
these have already been disclosed
to you.
Subject to these exceptions, the
information that the Council is able to disclose is attached to this e-mail in
electronic form.
If you are dissatisfied with the handling
of your request, you have the right to ask for an internal review. Internal
review requests should be submitted within two months of the date of receipt of
the response to your original letter and should be addressed to: Information
Request Assessor, Thanet District Council, P O Box 9 Cecil Street, Margate Kent CT9 1XZ,
or send an email to foi@thanet.gov.uk.
Please remember to quote the reference
number above in any future communications.
If you are not content with the outcome of
the internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information
Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Yours sincerely,
Corporate & Regulatory Services Manager”
This leaves me with. Yes. A bit more
information, but also leaves me with the problem I had before, which is that I have
quite a lot of documentary information about this development that I haven’t published
because I assume it is information that the council hold on their restricted
list and that publishing it would contravene their rules.
An example of this is the pdf file the
council call “Pleasurama Redacted Information” now anyone looking at this for
the first time would assume that the bits the council won’t let you read, are
the bits they have blacked out and these are the only bits missing, however I have
the original document and it may surprise readers to hear that apart from the
blacked out bits about half the pages are also missing.
This raises some interesting questions like. Did
the council leave these pages out deliberately? Do the council hold a lot of
information that not only do they not wish to release, but they don’t even want
to tell members of the public they hold?
This type of communication with the council
is bizarre enough anyway, because they get 20 working days to fulfil foi
requests, which in practice means a month. If you ask them what is going on
before the month is up, if they reply at all it is to tell you that they still
have more time. If you ask them after the month is up, at best you get a reply
saying they are sorry the documents are late….. I have the whole sorry correspondence
and will forbear publishing it.
I guess most people will realise that
communicating with someone where it takes a month to get any sort of useful
reply is a bit of a dispiriting business.
I will endeavour to add a bit to this post,
when I have had a chance to have a proper look at the documents they have sent
me.
Starting with the first document (unredacted)
the presentation on the Pleasurama development begins on page 8 and key to this
is it being a Whitbread development, so looking at documents the council may or
may not hold that I do, I have redacted this one myself.
Another key aspect of this presentation is that it is funded
by a Swiss bank SFP, see page 10, it says that SFP Ventures Partners limited is
part of SFP Swiss Bank.
SFP was a Swiss private investment firm which when it gained
a banking licence in 2003 became SBP Swiss private Bank.
I have redacted another document I hold which says something
rather different.
The relevant bit being:
“- Where
officers deem it necessary to exclude the press and public due to the content
of a report, the report that recommends the exclusion of the press and public
will, in future, state what the public interest test is, to explain the
rational for the exclusion, and what is meant by commercially sensitive, where
applicable.
- The
exclusion report will also state that in the case where the public interest
test is finely balanced, that the presumption will be in favour of publishing.
-
The annual review of contract standing orders and the tight
controls over tender opening, which already exist.”
So would think it likely I may get a bit more of an
explanation about both what they have withheld and why.
I have now got down to page 87 where the
council’s protection is discussed, the key elements there being the £5.6m bond,
the retention of the freehold and that the council can repossess the site if
the developer doesn’t conform to the timescale
