“MyCSP have conducted a review on the following sift criteria: members who took partial retirement, paid additional Widows Pension Scheme contributions and were single at retirement. Of these 36 cases were fully reviewed. Please provide me with the number of cases, within the batch of 36 fully reviewed, that had their additional contributions repaid via salary? If this request is too wide or unclear, I would be grateful if you could contact me as I understand that under the Act, you are required to advise and assist requesters. …”
“As you know, the original review undertaken by MyCSP identified 36 cases for review out of 326. Your request exceeds the cost limit because in order to establishing (sic) whether the requested information is held, MyCSP would have to review the 36 to identify details relating to contributions repaid by salary. We estimate that these activities would take an hour per case and therefore exceeds the appropriate limit. We are mindful of our section 16 duty to provide reasonable advice and assistance to requesters. However, in the circumstances of this case, given that MyCSP would have to re-sift the 36 cases we are unable to provide any suggestions as to how your request could be narrowed to bring a fresh request within the cost limit.”
“As the information you require is not held, it has been estimated that to review the 36 identified cases, would take an hour per case. This exceeds the appropriate limits stipulated under section 12.”
“The complainant argues that because MyCSP has already compiled the data for the 36 cases, there should be no additional cost to return to the review and provide the information he has requested. The department disagrees with the complainant’s position. The complainant has requested additional data relating specifically to the parameters of the sift rather than the original basis for the review which was to look for errors. To answer the FOI request would exceed the section 12 costs limits under the Act. The Cabinet Office, including through any information held by MyCSP on its behalf, do not currently hold the information required, or record it in the specific manner that the complainant has requested. As background knowledge, MyCSP build members’ pension records based on data provided by employers by way of an electronic interface. MyCSP are wholly reliant on data provided by employers and have no direct access to a member’s service history or payroll data. This data changes every month with a new upload arriving, which then erases the old payment data. Therefore, to revisit the 36 cases, would be on a fresh basis as any records and calculations held as part of the original review would now be obsolete and would need to be completed again in its entirety. This additional data request, namely the parameters of the sift, would be outside of business as usual (BAU) salary clarification requests. To ensure that the data is provided in the manner requested would require MyCSP to liaise with potentially 36 different employers to find the appropriate person to review the matter within the applicable human resources (HR) team for that case. This input would likely need to be chased and when the historic payroll data arrives, would then need to be checked for accuracy. Clarification between HR and MyCSP on aspects of the data, anomalies, and how the data should be provided would take further time. Additionally, a complex manual calculation to confirm if the contributions paid are equivalent to either 1.5%, 3%, or 4.5% of pensionable earnings would then need to be undertaken. This would be to ensure accuracy of each case and calculation, which would need to be checked by another person. A further issue would be that certain individuals identified in the 36 cases may have worked longer in service and therefore would have more WPS contributions to review. Therefore, the time will vary from case to case depending on the personal circumstances of each individual. Speculative Estimate: As stated above, MyCSP does not currently hold the information required, or record it in the specific manner that the member has requested. Consequently, this case is particularly unique, as there are no search terms that can be utilised in this case and due to the length of time it would take to contact some of the employers to gather the information and ensure its accuracy, a sample exercise is unrealistic and burdensome to conduct. As such, a sampling exercise would not be “sensible and realistic”, and a small sample would not be representative of the whole due to the individual issues which may arise in allocating and extracting the relevant information. The ICO has accepted this in other cases, including in decision notice FS50768806 and FS50768657. In line with these decision notices, the Cabinet Office is unable to provide an estimate for the Commissioner to consider and judge in this case. At a minimum, an official would need to coordinate this search work. Searches would need to be identified and conducted and any information would need to be reviewed to ascertain if it is or is not in scope of the request. To allow this salary aspect to be addressed for the complainant, the hourly rate for a Senior Pension Advisor to search the WPS contribution based salary records and liaise with external, various employers to request and validate this information is£87.20 and it is expected to take, at the very minimum, 54 hours in total which will exceed the appropriate cost limit. When the Cabinet Office originally commissioned a review, the time and costs of carrying out the work were significantly underestimated. However, the work provided internal assurance that there are no systemic issues in relation to WPS as well as providing assurance to the complainant. This additional labour had to be fitted in around BAU work as service levels. Pension payments are MyCSP’s key priority.It took quite some time to identify 326 cases that fit the applicants criteria alone. From the 326 potential cases identified, 36 applicable cases (10%) were reviewed in full, without a single error discovered. The review undertaken was a proportionate sample with no errors identified using the parameters and scope advised to the complainant. We have no reason to believe that MyCSP's review was not conducted in full and correctly. In this instance, we do not believe it is an appropriate use of public money to revisit this matter further.”
“[22] The Cabinet Office has explained that neither they nor MyCSP have access to member’s service history or payroll data, this is provided to them by employers and changes every month. Therefore, to revisit the 36 cases that were rigorously audited as part of the review would be on a fresh basis to answer the request made in July 2021 as any records and calculations held as part of the original review would be obsolete by the time of the request. The review was completed in March 2021 and the request was made in July 2021 and as explained above the Cabinet Office has said that the information required to answer the request is provided to them by employers and changes every month. If the method of repayment (which is the subject of the FOI request) could have potentially altered during the time between completion of the review and the FOI request it is clear the 36 cases would require reassessment. [23] The Cabinet Office has however further explained that this is a new request for information, specifically regarding the parameters of the original sift carried out. So as the Commissioner understands it, potentially the request was made to check the scope of the original review undertaken. It is not however within the Commissioner’s remit to comment upon the scope of the original review undertaken. If the Cabinet Office does not hold information which would answer the request in this case within records and calculations held as part of the original review either because this didn’t fall within the parameters of the review or because this may have altered due to the time period between completion of the review and the FOI request being made, this would not disturb the Commissioner’s conclusions regarding the application of section 12 FOIA in relation to this request.”
“General right of access to information held by public authorities (1) Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled – (a) to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request, and (b) if that is the case, to have that information communicated to him. … (4) The information – (a) in respect of which the applicant is to be informed under subsection (1)(a), or (b) which is to be communicated under subsection (1)(b). is the information in question held at the time when the request is received, except that account may be taken of any amendment or deletion made between that time and the time when the information is to be communicated under subsection (1)(b), being an amendment or deletion that would have been made regardless of the receipt of the request.” (1) Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled – (a) to be informed in writing by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request, and (b) if that is the case, to have that information communicated to him. … (4) The information – (a) in respect of which the applicant is to be informed under subsection (1)(a), or (b) which is to be communicated under subsection (1)(b). is the information in question held at the time when the request is received, except that account may be taken of any amendment or deletion made between that time and the time when the information is to be communicated under subsection (1)(b), being an amendment or deletion that would have been made regardless of the receipt of the request.”
“17. On a complaint, the issue for the Commissioner is whether the public authority dealt with the request in accordance with Part I of FOIA (section 50(1)). On appeal, the issue for the First-tier Tribunal is whether the Commissioner’s decision notice was in accordance with the law (section 58(1)). The latter in effect requires the First-tier Tribunal to consider afresh whether the public authority dealt with the request in accordance with Part I. 18.Two issues arise under Part I. The first is whether the authority made an estimate. This arises under section 12. If it did not make an estimate, it is not entitled to rely on the section, as the existence of an estimate is a precondition for the application of the section. If it did, the second issue is whether the estimate included any costs that were either not reasonable or not related to the matters that may be taken into account. This arises under regulation 4(3). Both issues focus on the authority, on how it holds the information, and how it would retrieve it. 19.The first issue is entirely subjective to the public authority. That is the language of section 12; it is personal to the authority. The cost of compliance will be related to the way that the authority holds the information. This is consistent with Upper Tribunal Judge Markus’s analysis in Cruelty Free International v Information Commissioner[2017] UKUT 318 (AAC) . I agree with her that it does not matter if the way in which the information is held fails to comply with other legal obligations than FOIA. It might be otherwise if the authority had deliberately distributed the information in a way that would always allow it to rely on section 12. That is not the case here and it was not the case in Cruelty Free. 20.The second issue contains an objective element. The issue arises under regulation 4(3) of what costs ‘a public authority … reasonably expects to incur in relation to the request’. The word ‘reasonably’ introduces an objective element, but it does so as a qualification of the costs that the authority in question expects to incur. The test is not a purely objective one of what costs it would be reasonable to incur or reasonable to expect to incur. It is a test that is subjective to the authority but qualified by an objective element. It allows the Commissioner and the tribunal to remove from the estimate any amount that the authority could not reasonably expect to incur either on account of the nature of the activity to which the cost relates or its amount. This mixture of subjective and objective elements is comparable to the approach taken to the interpretation and application of similar language in what is now regulation 100(2) of theHousing Benefit Regulations 2006 .”