Adur & Worthing Councils Worthing Town Hall Chapel Road Worthing West Sussex, BN11 1HA www.adur-worthing.gov.uk Jon Heuch Date: 4th January 2019 Sent via: Service: Information Governance [email protected] Our Reference: EIR/927453/2018 Dear Jon Heuch Thank you for contacting us requesting a review of our decision relating to your recent Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (‘EIR’) request. Your request has been passed to me to consider. Chronology 5th December 2018 You submitted a request for information to Adur & Worthing Council (‘AWC’), asking for the following information: “Could you tell me how many Tree Preservation Orders are currently administered by the Council? Could you tell me the date when the oldest TPO currently still valid was served?” 6th December 2018 AWC acknowledged your request. 6th December 2018 AWC provided you with a response to your request which I have attached for your ease of reference. 7th December 2018 You emailed AWC requesting a review of our response as follows: Adur & Worthing Councils, Worthing Town Hall, Chapel Road, Worthing, West Sussex, BN11 1HA www.adur-worthing.gov.uk - facebook.com/AdurWorthingCouncils - twitter.com/adurandworthing “Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews. I am writing to request an internal review of Worthing Borough Council's handling of my FOI request 'Number of Tree Preservation Orders administered by the council'. The Council has answered my second question so only the first question remains: How many Tree Preservation Orders (TPOs) does the council adminster i.e. TPOs that are still valid? The Council's answer is two fold: 1) the council does not hold a written record 2) your TPO documents are in files 3) it would cost too much to count them Based on the 2012 Regulations (and previous regulations stating the same) the Council is legally obliged to 12.—(1) Every authority shall keep a register containing the following information with respect to orders made by that authority— (a) details of every application under an order and of the authority’s decision (if any) in relation to each such application; (b) a statement of the subject-matter of every appeal under an order and of the date and nature of the Secretary of State’s determination of it; and (c) details of any conditions with respect to replanting attaching to any consent granted under regulation 17(1). (2) Every register kept under this regulation shall be available for inspection by the public at all reasonable hours. That is so say, the council has to keep a far more detailed register than just the list of TPOs. From such a register the number of TPOs should be readily available. Each TPO is a separate land charge on property. The register also needs to be available for inspection in your offices. I assume this meant on paper in the past and the access to online information doesn't negate the need to make the register available on paper. My request for information is thus a very small part of the information that the council is legally obliged to keep and make available to the public. Furthermore, even if the council has been lax at complying with the law (which has been in place at least since 1969 in various formats) the time needed to count the Adur and Worthing Councils, Town Hall, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 1HA www.adur-worthing.gov.uk number of TPOs is not large. Most councils have less than 1000 TPOs). At 10 seconds per TPO the total time required to count 1000 TPOs would be 166 minutes or a little less than 3 hours. As this is information that would actually define the scope of the work of the council it seems an estimate of the number of TPOs might actually be of use to the council.” Points raised From your letter dated 7th December 2018, I have summarised that the points to be reviewed or clarified are as follows: ● How does the council hold a written record of TPOs; and ● Justify why it would cost too much to count the TPOs in order to fully respond to this request Decision and reason(s) I have spoken to a colleague who regularly uses and manages the information that you have requested. I can confirm from my conversation with him, that AWC does hold the information you have requested and it is held in a combination of electronic and paper formats. Both the electronic and paper records will have listed / stored details of TPOs that are not valid as they are unconfirmed. This is usually because of not being agreed at Committee meetings. This would mean that counting the files would not answer the request and each file would need to be examined. My colleague has also advised me that the information can be checked on a case by case basis. For example if a member of the public was to provide us with an address we can check our data to see if there is a TPO registered at that address. Therefore AWC does hold details of every application, the decision, appeals, SoS determinations, and conditions with respect to replanting. We can also, on request from any member of the public and during office hours, provide information on request, when it is for a particular address. As you will probably appreciate searching all of our records as they are currently held would far exceed the 18 hours in locating all of the information you have requested. Currently AWC does hold a list for TPOs since 2015, at https://www.adur-worthing.gov.uk/planning-policy/conservation-and-heritage/trees/tpo-regist er/​. Ideally AWC would like to have a full register on our website but this will involve a considerable amount of work to go through the electronic and paper records to create a full list. There is no appetite to spend public funds on this at the moment, as we can demonstrate compliance with the The Town and Country Planning (Tree Preservation)(England) Regulations 2012. Adur and Worthing Councils, Town Hall, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 1HA www.adur-worthing.gov.uk I understand that this may not be the answer that you had hoped for but I agree with my colleagues initial assessment and response and we will be unable to provide you with the information you have requested for the original reasons provided. If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you may apply directly to the Information Commissioner (ICO) for a decision. Generally, the ICO will not investigate your complaint until you have exhausted our own appeal process. The ICO can be contacted at: https://ico.org.uk/concerns/getting/ or alternatively you can write to them at the following address: The Information Commissioner’s Office Wycliffe House Water Lane Wilmslow Cheshire SK9 5AF Yours sincerely Mike Wall Senior Information Governance Officer, Adur & Worthing Councils Email: ​[email protected]​, or ​[email protected] Enclosures: 1-Request Response [[927453]] dated 06-12-2018 Adur and Worthing Councils, Town Hall, Worthing, West Sussex BN11 1HA www.adur-worthing.gov.uk .