Dear Sir or Madam,

On 26 January 2006, a seminar was held in London by the
International Broadcasting Trust (one of their Real World
Brainstorm seminars) on the subject of climate change. I would like
to know the names of any DEFRA staff who attended.

Yours faithfully,

Andrew Montford

Hi Andrew,

No one in Evidence, AQIP or ICC within my Climate Change Group attended
this seminar.

Martin N.Cook
Executive Officer
International Climate, Air and Analysis Directorate
3D Ergon House, c/o Nobel House, 17 Smith Square,
London SW1P 3JR
0207 238 5584
[email address]

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Montford,

FOIA - Invitation to narrow down / clarify request

Thank you for your request of 14 August to the Defra Helpline, which falls under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, for the following:
On 26 January 2006, a seminar was held in London by the International Broadcasting Trust (one of their Real World Brainstorm seminars) on the subject of climate change. I would like to know the names of any DEFRA staff who attended.

I would like to apologise for the delay in responding to this request, and hope that it has not caused you any inconvenience.

We want to be as open as possible in answering requests. The Act itself also requires us to help people obtain the information they are looking for. Unfortunately, your request is very broad and could cover an enormous amount of information. I would like to explain why this would be the case. The Dept does not centrally record training, and so the attendance of a course would be decided on a managerial level. This means that to find out who in Defra attended the seminar you are interested in I would have to contact all policy areas within Defra, asking all managers to report back to me confirming whether any of their staff had attended. This would be likely to involve a significant cost and diversion of resources from the Department's other work. It certainly seems likely to exceed the £600 cost limit which the Government has set for dealing with Freedom of Information requests.

You may wish to contact the International Broadcasting Trust, to see if they would release the list to you, but they are not bound by the FOI Act, and so may refuse (especially as they would be bound by the Data Protection Act).

You are of course welcome to re-submit a request that clarifies the information you want, and that could be answered within the cost limit. For example, do you know the area within Defra that the staff that attended (if any) work in?

If you do not wish to narrow down your request but still want us to consider it, please let us know. However, if we conclude that responding to the request would involve too great a diversion of resources you should be aware that we may have to charge for the information or even refuse the request.

Please let me know how you would like us to proceed.

Yours sincerely

Marie Taylor

Information Rights Team
Area 1E, 3-8 Whitehall Place, London
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