Information about the accommodation costs of Tom Pursglove, MP

I can confirm that we hold some information relevant to your request but it is subject to Refusal Notice under section 12(1) of the FOIA.

IPSA is not required to comply with a request for information if it estimates that the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit set by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 (the "Fees Regulations"). Under the Fees Regulations, a public authority can only take into account the time it reasonably expects to incur in the tasks set out in regulation 4(3)(a)-(d) (the "Allowable Tasks"). For IPSA this is set at 18 hours or £450.

In a case in which this regulation has effect, a public authority may, for the purpose of its estimate, take account only of the costs it reasonably expects to incur in relation to the request in -

(a) determining whether it holds the information,

(b) locating the information, or a document which may contain the information,

(c) retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the information,

(d) extracting the information from a document containing it.

To determine if the information is held for the period 2015 to 2019, we would need to search in a number of locations, for example, filing cabinets and legacy systems. A preliminary search was carried out in one system under the entry for the MP. This retrieved 32 pages of results of expense claims, with 15 claim entries per page. Due to the way that the information is categorised, it would be necessary to go into each entry to determine if it relates to constituency office rental claims. The total number of claims to check is 480 and it is estimated that to do this would take five minutes per claim, and 40 hours in total. This is over the appropriate limit and is therefore the reason that we rely on section 12(1).

IPSA has a duty to advise and assist you in narrowing down your request, however, I can tell you that for the period from 2019, we do not hold any invoices for rental payments, as these are made directly by IPSA to the landlord.

In terms of copies of lease agreements, we would consider the application of the exemption at s.41 of the FOIA, the information provided in confidence.