FOI - Hope not Hate [Apr 2024]

Your request 

I would like to request the following information:

1. Any records detailing funds allocated or disbursed to the charity Hope Not Hate by the Mayor's Office or the GLA from January 2016 to the present day.
2. Details of any contracts, agreements, or arrangements made between the Mayor's Office and/or the GLA and Hope Not Hate during the specified period.
3. Any internal communications, memos, or emails related to the decision-making process or discussions regarding funding for Hope Not Hate

Our response

1. Following a competitive procurement process, Hope not hate Charitable Trust were the community organisation that was assigned to deliver the pilot for the GLA - coordinated London Voter Registration Week in 2019. The payments are published on our website (see 2019-20 consolidated report) Our spending | London City Hall
2. Please find attached contract to which the payments related. All the impartial activity under this pilot was overseen, in terms of sign off and due diligence, by GLA officers led by the Senior Responsible Officer (SRO), the Executive Director for Communities and Skills
3. Unfortunately, we have estimated that the cost of complying with your request would exceed the “appropriate limit” specified in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’ for brevity. Section 12 of the Act provides that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request if the cost of determining whether we hold the information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other information would exceed the appropriate limit. The aforementioned Fees Regulations stipulate that this limit is £450; calculated at £25 per hour for every hour spent on the activities described and equates to 18 hours of work. The GLA Democratic Participation programme is based on co-design and co-delivery - this involves significant exchanges between GLA officers and all our delivery partners on the design, review and delivery of all GLA-branded activity and resources in this policy area, to ensure GLA standards in relation to internal legal and governance sign offs and impartiality are observed. There is no mechanism at our disposal to perform an automated search for relevant information. We have therefore refused this request under the cost limit provisions of section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act and this letter therefore constitutes a refusal notice under section 17(1) of the Act. We have estimated that it would take well in excess of 18 hours of work to comply with your request as a significant amount of time would be needed to retrieve and extract the specific information you have requested from our records, including separating it from other information which is not directly related to your request. In order to bring your request within the cost threshold, you may wish to limit your request by identifying particular themes or context associated with the programme now that you are in receipt of the contract. Please note any narrowed request will be treated as a new request for information for consideration under the Act.