Local Elections – Postal Votes
From: Paul Richardson 6th January 2014
Dear Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council,Could you provide me with the following information relating to the
Local Elections for Bolton Metropolitan Borough Council
held on 3rd May 2012.
1) The number of Postal Votes requested and issued for each of the
20 wards of the Borough.
2) The number of Postal Votes completed and returned for each of
the 20 wards of the borough.
3) The number of returned Postal Votes across the Borough subsequently
judged to be invalid
Yours faithfully,
Paul Richardson
Can we have a FOI request to see how much it costs in terms of cash for council staff to answer all these FOI requests and then send a bill to whoever requests them?
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. You will however note that if the requested information is available elsewhere (as in the case of the TPO request) then the FOI will be refused.
ReplyDeleteThis means that in the case of a successful FOI, it is not possible to find this information from another source. In the case of the Area Forum Deprivation Budget, I searched high and low on the Council's website for the information with no success. Many public bodies would prefer that certain information is difficult if not impossible to find and will bend over backwards not to release it. Tony Blair introduced the FOI system (and regretted it ever since) but it has been used by others since to uncover many scandals which would otherwise never have surfaced. Maybe there should be a charge of say a tenner a go, but the legislation doesn't allow it. Regards Mr 81.110.59.237 - Paul