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Imperial College London

Incomplete, Original Response Essentially Total Refusal
-- Original Response (17 Nov 2014): Imperial1.pdf (Imperial1a.xlsx/Imperial1a.pdf)

From: JJ Hermes
Sent: 20 October 2014 12:17
To: foi@imperial.ac.uk
Subject: FOI request

To whom it may concern,

I respectfully request the following information under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act:

1. The names and titles of all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. These individuals are considered "higher-paid staff" by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE).

2. Please identify the number of individuals identified in the first request who are (a) tenured faculty, (b) clinical staff, or (c) serve in a non-classroom capacity, such as administrative staff.

3. The total emoluments for the past five (5) years for each of the senior staff identified in the first request.

There is wide precedent across publicly funded entities in the UK of regularly disclosing this type of information. The Accounts and Audit (Amendment no 2) Regulations of 2009 require local authorities to publish the actual salaries, allowances, bonuses, compensation and employer's pension contributions paid to each employee who earned over £50,000, and in addition to publish the names of those staff who earned over £150,000 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/3322/made). It is not necessary to disclose the exact salary of the employees earning more than £150,000, but rather to quote that amount in bands of £10,000, as directed by the HEFCE.

The request holds significant public interest, given that the university is a publicly funded institution of higher education that derives a significant portion of funding from public taxation. In addition, openness is, in itself, something in the public interest in promoting accountability and transparency in the spending of public money. As suggested by the Information Commissioner's Office, "It is reasonable to expect that a public authority would disclose more information relating to senior employees than more junior ones. Senior employees should expect their posts to carry a greater level of accountability." Employees earning more than £150,000 annually can be considered senior employees, since this compensation is more than twice the highest grade on the human resources salary scale.

I look forward to hearing back from you regarding this request. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any follow-up questions. I would prefer all correspondence be sent digitally through this e-mail address, including the response to this request. Thank you for your time in addressing this query.

Sincerely,
JJ Hermes
On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 12:33 PM, MPFOI (foi@imperial.ac.uk) wrote (RE: FOI request):

Dear Mr Hermes

This is to acknowledge receipt of your request below, made under the Freedom of Information Act. As you may know, the College must respond to your request within twenty working days of receipt of your request, and sooner if possible.

We will contact you again in due course.

Kind regards,
Jessica Silver
On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 12:19 PM, MPFOI (foi@imperial.ac.uk) wrote (RE: FOI request):

Dear Mr Hermes

Further to your request below please could you provide further clarification as part 2 of your request.

Please identify the number of individuals identified in the first request who are (a) tenured faculty, (b) clinical staff, or (c) serve in a non-classroom capacity, such as administrative staff.

Please could you explain what you mean by "tenured faculty". For category (b) are you referring to clinical academic roles? Please note -- such individuals would normally be members of staff within the Faculty of Medicine. For category (c) please clarify what you mean by "Non-classroom"? Do you mean non academic staff? We are unclear who you mean to include in this category alongside administrative staff.

Please note, until we have heard from you we will not be able to proceed with considering that part of your request.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards
Jessica
On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:57 AM, FOI Office (foi@gla.ac.uk) wrote (Re: RESPONSE to Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 Request - (FOI Ref: 2014/285 - F0444013)):

Hi Jessica,

Thank you for your question.

Apologies for the reference to "tenured faculty" -- I am coming from the US, where this phrase actually has meaning! Since the UK doesn't have tenure, "tenured faculty" in this context should mean anyone who is a professor or some kind of classroom duties. Perhaps "academic staff" would have been most appropriate.

For part (b) I am referring to any clinical role, academic or otherwise. I suspect there may be some folks who belong both to categories (a) and (b).

And yes, for category (c) I mean by non-academic staff, which might be entirely administrative staff. There may not be anyone else in this category besides administrative staff, but some universities have private-public partnerships and those staff are not exactly administrative nor do they have classroom duties; I meant for them to be included in the (c) category.

To summarize, perhaps a better way to distinguish would have been:

(a) academic staff
(b) clinical staff
(c) administrative (or other) staff

Cheers,
JJ
On Mon, Nov 17, 2014 at 5:34 PM, MPFOI (foi@imperial.ac.uk) wrote (RE: FOI request):

Dear Mr Hermes,

Thank you for your Freedom of Information request and later clarification of part 2 of your request. Please find the College's response to your request as follows:

1. The names and titles of all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. These individuals are considered "higher-paid staff" by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE).

2. Please identify the number of individuals identified in the first request who are (a) tenured faculty, (b) clinical staff, or (c) serve in a non-classroom capacity, such as administrative staff.

3. The total emoluments for the past five (5) years for each of the senior staff identified in the first request.

Please find attached information on the numbers of staff in each salary band whose total emoluments was in excess of £150,000 in the year ended 31 July 2014. The total emoluments includes salary, allowances, bonuses and employers' pension contributions.

Details of the name, job title and corresponding remuneration of all staff members who received in excess of £150,000 in 2013-14 have not been provided as this constitutes the personal data of the individuals concerned. Personal data is exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act which states that 'any information to which a request for information relates is also exempt information if – (a) it constitutes personal data'. Additionally the College considers the release of employee names and job titles, alongside remuneration data to be exempt under section 43(2) of the Act which states that information is exempt if its disclosure 'would or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it)'. This is because the College operates in a highly competitive international market place where universities are competing with other institutions, including those in the private sector which are not subject to FOI, to attract the best academics and support staff to their employ. Release of this data would make it easier for competing institutions to poach the College's more senior staff with offers of higher salaries. The poaching of such staff would impact negatively on the College and make it harder for it to compete for income from the Government and other sources of funding. Disclosure could also detrimentally effect salary negotiations with existing and potential new employees as individuals would have a greater awareness of the remuneration paid to other staff members in similar positions. Additionally, the release of the data would likely lead to internal discontent amongst staff who would be able to access the salary data of their colleagues or individuals in similar or equivalent roles. The First Tier Information Rights Tribunal has recently confirmed that section 43(2) can appropriately be applied to academic staff.

Although universities receive public funds to support some of their activities, the portion of public funding for universities has reduced substantially in recent years. In the last two years almost 60% of the College's income has come from private sources rather than from public funds. Nevertheless, the College recognises that there is a public interest in the salaries of individuals paid even partially with public funds. However, it is the College's view that, for the reasons outlined above, the public interest in maintaining the exemptions outweighs the public interest in disclosure. It is essential that the College continues to retain its most senior staff who are responsible for delivering the College's mission of world class scholarship, education and research in science, engineering, medicine and business, with particular regard to their application in industry, commerce and healthcare and which benefits society as a whole.

With regard to part 2 of your request, you provided clarification as to the meaning of the terms used. Please find a percentage breakdown of the individuals who received in excess of £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014 for the categories requested.

Non clinical academic staff (32%), Clinical staff (62%), Other (6%)

Part 3 of your request requires this information for the previous 5 years. Information for 2013/14 has been provided but we are unable to provide similar information for the prior four years as to do so would exceed the cost limit set down in the Freedom of Information Act. Section 12 states that: (1) Section 1 (1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit (under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004). The appropriate limit is set at 18 hours.

It was possible to provide the data for 2013/14 as it was constructed using the same background data that informed the College's 2013/14 Annual Report and Accounts which will be available in December. For the preceding four years, the background data available is not detailed enough to produce these figures, so the data would need to be reconstructed from the beginning involving ICT, HR and Finance's input. The report that creates this information pulls data from multiple sources and it would need to be re-configured for each year. After the report has been run, the data then needs to be checked thoroughly for accuracy and the data for individuals not employed for the entire year needs to be manually checked and re-calculated. This entire lengthy process will need to be repeated for each year. In order to fall under the cost limit you will need to reduce the timeframe of your request (although it is possible that the cost limit would still be exceeded for the reasons outlined). Please note, however, that information on the remuneration of higher paid staff at the College, shown in bands of £10,000 from £100,000 upwards is provided in the College's Annual Report and Accounts each year. These are readily available on the College's web site at:

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/finance/aboutfinance/publications

This page includes copies of the annual accounts from 1997-98 to 2012-13. The accounts for 2013-14 will be available on the same web page before the end of this year.

I am obliged, under the Freedom of Information Act, to inform you of our complaints procedures in case you are unhappy about the way in which your request has been dealt with. If you wish to complain about this response, you should contact the College Secretary at the address below.

The College Secretary
Imperial College London
Exhibition Road
London
SW7 2AZ
Tel: 020 759 47272
E-mail: collegesecretary@imperial.ac.uk

The College Secretary must respond to all complaints within 20 working days.

If you are unhappy about the way in which the College Secretary handles your complaint then you may have recourse to the official regulator for the Freedom of Information Act who is:

The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
http://www.ico.gov.uk

Kind regards,
Jessica

-- Attachment: Imperial1.pdf (Imperial1a.xlsx/Imperial1a.pdf)
On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:59 AM, JJ Hermes wrote (Re: FOI request):

To whom it may concern,

I write to respectfully dispute your response to my 20 Oct 2014 FOI request for information about senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. As a reminder, that request comprised three parts:

1. The names and titles of all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. These individuals are considered "higher-paid staff" by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE).

2. Please identify the number of individuals identified in the first request who are (a) tenured faculty, (b) clinical staff, or (c) serve in a non-classroom capacity, such as administrative staff.

3. The total emoluments for the past five (5) years for each of the senior staff identified in the first request.

I understand from your 17 Nov 2014 response that the University reserves the right to withhold public disclosure of individual staff and their salaries, which was part (1) of this request. However, the University has completely ignored part (3) of my original request, providing only information for 2013/14 that would be readily accessible in the University's Annual Report and Accounts, a public document. Previous years were not compiled on the grounds that "to do so would exceed the cost limit set down in the Freedom of Information Act." I do not believe you have responded to my original FOI request in full. Thus, I request the University respond to this original request in full:

Please identify all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. Please categorize them as one of the following, as per part (2) of this request: (a) academic staff, (b) clinical staff, or (c) senior management. Then, please provide the annual emoluments for the past five (5) years for each of the senior staff making more than £150,000 in total emoluments identified in the first part of this request. Please identify by name and title all members of the University's senior administrative team and management (e.g., staff in the Vice-Chancellor's Office such as pro-vice-chancellors, chief financial officer, chief operating officer, directors of institutes, etc.).

I have submitted this identical request to each of the 24 members of the Russell Group of universities, and a response from the University of Exeter (attached) exemplifies what I consider a complete fulfillment of my request. Note that it protects the personal data of all senior staff with the exception of the senior management team, and provides salary information in bands of £10,000 annually for the past five years. This information is not accessible from the University by any other means than a FOI request.

Moreover, a First-Tier Tribunal has ruled in a very similar case that universities must disclose the names/titles and salaries of all members of the PSS (Professional Services staff; ie, the senior management team) making more than £100,000 in total emoluments. The Information Commissioner's Office found in case FS50513117 dated 17 Feb 2014 that King's College London must release the names/titles and salaries of *all* staff making more than £100,000 in total emoluments (http://ico.org.uk/~/media/documents/decisionnotices/2014/fs_50513117.pdf). However, the First-Tier Tribunal ruled on 2 Oct 2014 in Case No. EA/2014/0054, an appeal from King's College, that only the names and salaries of members of the PSS (Professional Services staff; ie, the senior management team) making more than £100,000 in total emoluments are subject to disclosure (http://www.informationtribunal.gov.uk/DBFiles/Decision/i1390/Kings%20College%20London%20EA.2014.0054%20(30.09.14).pdf).

I appreciate your response in full to this request under the Freedom of Information Act of 2000. I look forward to hearing back from you regarding this request. Please do not hesitate to contact me with any follow-up questions. I would prefer all correspondence be sent digitally through this e-mail address, including the response to this request. Thank you for your time in addressing this query.

Sincerely,
JJ Hermes
On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 10:16 AM, MPFOI (foi@imperial.ac.uk) wrote (RE: FOI request):

Dear Mr Hermes

Thank you for your email, I am writing to acknowledge receipt of your internal review request. The College shall respond to you in due course.

Kind regards
Jessica
On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:38 PM, MPFOI (foi@imperial.ac.uk) wrote (FOI request):

Dear Mr Hermes,

I am writing on behalf of the College Secretary in response to your request for a review of your FOIA request in relation to staff at Imperial College paid more than £150,000 per annum.

You asked the College to provide:

1. The names and titles of all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. These individuals are considered "higher-paid staff" by the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE).

2. Please identify the number of individuals identified in the first request who are (a) tenured faculty, (b) clinical staff, or (c) serve in a non-classroom capacity, such as administrative staff.

3. The total emoluments for the past five (5) years for each of the senior staff identified in the first request.

In relation to your first question, the College provided you with information on the number of staff whose total emoluments was in excess of £150,000 in the year ended 31 July 2014, but withheld details of their names and job titles on the grounds that this was personal data and therefore exempt from release under Section 40(2) of the FOIA.

In relation to your second question, the College provided you with a breakdown of the percentage of academic, clinical and other staff who received in excess of £150,000 in 2013-14.

Finally, the College informed you that it was unable to answer your third question as it would exceed the cost limits set out in the FOIA to provide this information.

You have now submitted a complaint about the College's response and claim that the College has "completely ignored part (3) of my original request, providing only information for 2013/14 that would be readily accessible in the University's Annual Report and Accounts, a public document." You have also repeated your request with a few minor modifications and have now asked the College to:

"Identify all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014. Please categorize them as one of the following, as per part (2) of this request: (a) academic staff, (b) clinical staff, or (c) senior management. Then, please provide the annual emoluments for the past five (5) years for each of the senior staff making more than £150,000 in total emoluments identified in the first part of this request. Please identify by name and title all members of the University's senior administrative team and management (e.g., staff in the Vice-Chancellor's Office such as pro-vice-chancellors, chief financial officer, chief operating officer, directors of institutes, etc.)."

I have now had an opportunity to review your request.

With regard to part 1 of your request, the College originally provided you with a spreadsheet detailing the number of staff who received in excess of £150,000 in 2013-14. The data was organised in bands of £10,000. It was also explained to you that the names and job titles of these staff members was considered to be exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act as this information constituted the personal data of the staff concerned.

In your modified request, you have now asked instead for the identity of "all senior staff members making more than £150,000 in total emoluments for the year ended 31 July 2014."

The College has already provided you with information on the numbers of staff making more than £150,000. As noted above, the College was not able to provide you with information about the identities of these members of staff as this was considered to be personal data and therefore exempt from disclosure. I have reviewed this information and am satisfied that the exemption in this case has been applied correctly. I have therefore decided not to uphold this part of your complaint.

In relation to your complaint that the College ignored your request, it appears that you may have misunderstood the information provided to you by the College. The information you were provided with was not taken from the College's annual report, but was created in order to respond to your FOIA request. The data published in the College's annual report provides information on staff remuneration only, and does not include pension contributions. However, you had asked for information on the total emoluments received by staff, which includes salary, allowances, bonuses and employer's pension contributions. The information you were provided with on 17 November is for total emoluments including pension contributions, as you requested, and is therefore different to that published in the College's annual report.

With regard to part 2 of your request, you asked the College to categorize these staff as (a) academic staff, (b) clinical staff, or (c) senior management (in your original request, this category was designated as 'administrative').

The College originally provided you with a percentage breakdown using your categories. However, in my view this is not what you asked for. I have therefore reconfigured this information to provide a more accurate response to your original request:

Total Staff with emoluments in excess of £150,000: 143
Academic Staff: 135
Clinical Staff (all clinical staff are also academic staff): 88

In addition to the 135 members of academic staff who receive in excess of £150,000 a year, there are 8 staff members who are categorised as 'non-academic.' The College does not have a category of staff that matches the definition you have given for 'senior management.' All of the staff who receive more than £150,000 a year are considered to be senior staff.

Your third question asked for the annual emoluments for the past five years for each of the staff making more than £150,000 identified in the first part of your request. Rather than refining your request, as was suggested by the College, you have simply repeated this part of your request.

The College's original response explained that extracting this information for 143 members of staff for five years was a complex task that would exceed the cost limits set out in the FOIA. This is because, although the College holds this information, it does not keep a separate record of total emoluments received, including pension contributions and other allowances and this information must therefore be created in order to respond to your request. As previously noted, the information provided in the annual reports, which are readily available on the College website, is based on remuneration received rather than total emoluments. In response to your request, I have re-examined the estimated resources required to produce the precise information you have requested and am satisfied that it would exceed the cost limits, particularly as the data for each year would also have to be cross-referenced against the data for 2013-14 to ensure that information for the same individuals is being provided.

Finally, you have asked the College to identify by name and title all members of the University's senior administrative team and management. The definition you have given for "senior administrative team and management" does not match any group of staff within the University; however, the names and titles of the College's Principal Officers are readily available on the College's website.

You have also provided a copy of the response you received from Exeter University as an example of the type of data you were expecting. I would note that the Exeter response includes data on just 19 members of staff. Producing the same level of data for 143 staff members over a period of 5 years is considerably more complex. This is why we have determined that it would exceed the cost limits to complete your request.

Finally, you have made reference to the recent decision of the First-Tier Tribunal in relation to King's College London. The College is aware of this decision; indeed, it was referenced explicitly in the College's original response to your request, when the College noted that the First Tier Information Rights Tribunal had "recently confirmed that section 43(2) can appropriately be applied to academic staff."

As was explained to you in the original response, the College considers the release of employee names and job titles, alongside remuneration data to be exempt under section 43(2) of the Act which states that information is exempt if its disclosure 'would or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of any person (including the public authority holding it)'. This is because the College operates in a highly competitive international market place where universities are competing with other institutions, including those in the private sector which are not subject to FOI, to attract the best academics and support staff to their employ. Release of this data would make it easier for competing institutions to poach the College's more senior staff with offers of higher salaries. The poaching of such staff would impact negatively on the College and make it harder for it to compete for income from the Government and other sources of funding. Disclosure could also detrimentally effect salary negotiations with existing and potential new employees as individuals would have a greater awareness of the remuneration paid to other staff members in similar positions. Additionally, the release of the data would likely lead to internal discontent amongst staff who would be able to access the salary data of their colleagues or individuals in similar or equivalent roles. The College's view is that the concerns set out above apply equally to its senior academic and administrative staff and that consequently section 43(2) of the Act also applies to information concerning the College's senior administrative staff.

I have reviewed these arguments and am satisfied that the disclosure of this information about the College's senior academic and administrative staff would or would be likely to prejudice the College's commercial interests and have therefore decided to reject your complaint on these grounds.

This completes the review of your FOIA request.

If you are unhappy about the way in which I have handled your complaint then you may have recourse to the official regulator for the Freedom of Information Act who is:

The Information Commissioner
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
http://www.ico.gov.uk


Kind regards,
Jon Hancock

Mr Jon B Hancock BA (Hons)
Head of Central Secretariat & Assistant Clerk to the Court and Council
Level 4, Faculty Building
Imperial College London
South Kensington campus
London SW7 2AZ, UK
(: + 44 (0)20 7594 5535
7: + 44 (0)20 7594 8802
8: jonathan.hancock@imperial.ac.uk
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/secretariat
---------------------------------------------
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