Background information relating to pay auditor report

First, please accept my apologies for the delay in responding to your requests, while we established the nature of the information that you are requesting, what information we hold and whether we are able to disclose the information you are seeking.

As the information that you have requested was compiled by the company Pay Auditor, we have sought to establish whether it is held by IPSA for the purposes of the FOIA. Section 3(2) of the FOIA states:

For the purposes of this Act, information is held by a public authority if—

(a) it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person, or

(b) it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

As such, we consider that the information is held by Pay Auditor on behalf of IPSA, and is therefore subject to the terms of the FOIA.

Section 12 of the FOIA states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.

We undertook a test to estimate the amount of time it would take to locate, retrieve and extract this information. We estimate that the combination of the costs that would be incurred would take us over the appropriate cost limit of £450. Consequently, IPSA is not obliged to respond to your request (see section 12(1), FOIA).