wightdogs.com ISLE of WIGHT DOGS and OWNERS

We have been requesting information about the Dog Service on the Island in order to supply the 102 members of this website, and the many other unregistered users, ease of access to information in order that they can come to an informed decision of whether the Islands dog Wardens are offering value for money.

We are in a time of recession and inevitably cuts are going to have to be made in the expenditure of the council in the future. Whether vital services should have their budgets reduced in order that we can continue to fund a service that we have already established have only issued a total of 12 successful dog fouling fines in a period of 2 years out of the last 3, we would like the council tax payers of the Island to be able to reach their decision upon using the relevant data.

Yet the council have now in effect blocked us from obtaining any further information, relating to the performance of their dog service, on the grounds of the cost of supplying that information. Also as stated below they appear to be implying that should anybody else request information relating to the dire performance of their dog service, as is their right under the Freedom Of Information Act, they will consider this to be "acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign" which would enable them to not supply the information.

A campaign to obtain information that should be in the public domain? What exactly is wrong with a campaign? I am left wondering what Winston Churchill would have made of the outlawing of a campaign. As without our campaign during the Second World War would this country be the "Free Country" it supposedly is now?

The Isle of Wight councils Information officer:

"Unfortunately, I have estimated that the time it will take to determine if the Council holds the information, including locating, retrieving and extracting the information, to enable us to respond to your request, will exceed the fee limit as set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004. Therefore, the Council is not obliged to provide a response.

For information purposes, the fee limit set down by the Lord Chancelloris £450 and in our case this equates to a maximum of 18 hours of searchand retrieval time. The Fees Regulations state that two or morer equests can be aggregated for the purposes of calculating costs if they are:

•   by one person, or by different persons who appear to the publicauthority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign;
•   for the same or similar information; and
•   the subsequent request is received by the public authority within 60 working days of the previous request.

Accordingly, the Council has considered this latest request in conjunction with your previous requests relating to the Dog Warden service, submitted over the last 3 weeks. The Council has already spen tseveral hours in dealing with these requests, and I must advise that to deal with this latest request would exceed the limit."

All the Freedom Of Information requests by wightdogs, and responses, can be found here