FOI for governor minutes

[nomeentiende]

The school where I'm a governor has received an FOI request from a parent for all Full Governing Body and committee meeting minutes for the last 5 years. My initial thought is that the amount of time it would take for someone to go through all the minutes and redact anything confidential would push the request over the £450 limit, and this would therefore be reasonable grounds for refusal. Does that seem reasonable? There must be plenty of other schools have had similar requests in the past, so perhaps a precedent has been set one way or another - any pointers would be helpful.

Im not sure i understand - the munutee are public documents they shouldnt have lots of confidentual stuff in them them.

I am not sure there is anything in Governors Meeting Minutes that would need redaction as there should never be discussion of a specific child by name.

I should add that it is likely the request is vexatious as the person in question has been posting a lot of unpleasant misinformation about the school on social media.

Are they not readily available, though, on the school website? It may well be a vexatious request but is there a reason why you are not looking to fulfil it? Approved minutes should be publically available surely?

There shouldn't be anything that is confidential in those minutes. The only exception would be 'Part 2 ' minutes. Never had a Governors meeting that had to have that.

The Governors meeting minutes should be readily available for parents.

Your Clerk should be looking this up for you and will have a network where they can ask.

Also check here , I no longer have access as no longer a Governor

schoolgovernors.thekeysupport.com/the-governing-body/meetings/minutes/minutes-confidentiality-among-governors/

Very difficult to use ‘vexatious’ as a reason to withhold information that should be readily available in the public domain in my experience (public sector here).

I agree that minutes should be written in a way that allow easy publication and should that be the case attaching 30 pdfs to an email shouldn’t be terribly time consuming.

Guidance on vexatious requests.

ico.org.uk/media/1198/dealing-with-vexatious-requests.pdf

PP are right. The minutes are public documents by law, once they have been approved at the following meeting. There is no legal requirement to put them on the school website. Anything confidential should have been covered in separate confidential minutes, and generally these do not need to be made public although there have been cases where a court has ordered the release of confidential minutes. A fair number of governors and clerks do not realise that confidential matters should be minuted separately though but it's a bit late now to change them, and redacting minuted now will add ammunition to a vexatious complaint. If your minutes contain confidential stuff, seek advice from your LA governor support department and/or legal team.

the person in question has been posting a lot of unpleasant misinformation about the school on social media.

Things like the school doesn't follow its statutory responsibilities, the school isn't open and transparent, the school lies and covers stuff up...

Wonder why

I should add that it is likely the request is vexatious as the person in question has been posting a lot of unpleasant misinformation about the school on social media.

Given the compete irrelevance of this opinion to the law on public information, could you enlighten us into why you should add this?

could you enlighten us into why you should add this?

For context. I came here for advice not ridicule.

By 'confidential', I mean personal details, for example, people's names that have been written in full rather than as initials. An example would be the full name of a teacher or a visitor to the school.

So no one knows teachers or governors names, and they are to be kept secret. I'd be asking a lot of questions too if my dc's school had that attitude.

I think, going forward, your board need to look at how the minutesxare written and make sure they are made public as they legally shoukd be. Part 2 minutes are slightly different but there is info on better governor about those.

Don't be a prat titchy. You clearly have a very large chip on your shoulder about something.

I'm not - no skin off my nose what you do! But as Governors you're supposed to be open and transparent. You're clearly not, and perpetuating that by looking for reasons to refuse the FOI.

I'm sure the Chair and Clerk will deal with it all properly. I'm a parent governor, fairly new to it all, and curious about how it will play out. Thankyou to everyone who has given the advice snd information I was looking for without trying to undermine me.

Titchy, you know nothing about the circumstances here and are just being unpleasant for the sake of it. Get a life.

Your Clerk needs further training - those minutes should not need redacting.

The minutes should be available to view - this is a legal requirement.

If you think this is a malicious/vexatious request then you'll only make things worse if you withhold or redact.

Is your Board a member of the NGA? If so you can call their helpline to get advice.

I'm pretty sure the time taken to do redactions doesn't count towards the cost threshold anyway. It's locating and retrieving the materials that counts for the cost threshold (which shouldn't take long at all in this case).

Ask the school's Data Protection Officer, it's not something for a governor to deal with, the appropriate knowledgable person needs to.

What is the Clerk like OP - hopefully more than a minute taker and able to advise the governing body.

The Nolan Principles of public life apply to school governors and include things like Openness and Accountability, hopefully you will have all signed a Code of Conduct and the school will have a Publication Scheme.

The D of E publishes a Governor's Handbook which is a useful benchmark no matter what type of school it is.

I'm a clerk. I can confirm it shouldn't take long at all, minutes are required to be published on the schools website and it's something Ofsted will look at before visiting so get them up asap! You should have a governor dealing with statutory website info.
Part 2 minutes will need to be redacted, depending on how recent they are and if there's something in there that's STILL sensitive you may be able to refuse to provide those at present I.e. if they're about redundancies that happened two years ago it's no longer a secret but if it's happening imminently it's still reasonable not to provide them.

I put in FOI requests all the time for minutes from governors’ meetings. If you try and dismiss this request as vexatious then the ICO will laugh in your face.

If you have stuff in the minutes that should not have been heard in the public session then you shouldn’t have heard them in the public session. It’s too late to do this after the event.

12 meetings a year for five years, two pages of minutes (IME) for each meeting. That’s only 120 pages. If there are names in there then it won’t cost you £450 to react them. It’s probably a day’s work max.

I think all governor meeting minutes should be available on the school’s website as a matter or course. That way, parents can see if the governing body is robust and if issues at school are being dealt with in the correct manner.

Full governing body minutes should be published on the School website so no idea why this is an issue.