FOI_24-018 Event cancellations
Date of response: 28 January 2025
We have now considered your request of 17 January 2025 for the following information:
Question 1: This is an information request relating to Speaker and event cancellations Please include the following information for the following academic years: 2021/22, 2022/23, and 2023/24 A list of all external speakers or events that have been cancelled, postponed, or otherwise prevented from taking place at the university for the years stated above. For each instance, please include: The name of the speaker or event title. The scheduled date of the event. The reason cited for the cancellation or postponement.
Question 2: Complaints About Speakers or Events: The total number of complaints received about external speakers or events in the same period. A breakdown of these complaints, specifying: The nature of the complaint (e.g., offensive content, hate speech, security concerns). The outcome of each complaint (e.g., event cancellation, additional security measures, no action taken
Our response:
Unfortunately, on this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information in relation to question 2. We have determined that the cost of finding and assembling some of the requested information will exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ as defined by section 12 of the Act and the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004/3244.
'The ‘appropriate limit’ of £450, which equates to 18 hours’ work, as defined by the Information Commissioner’s Office, can relate to one request in its entirety or to a series of linked requests. If the University cannot locate, retrieve and extract some or all of the requested information within the 18 hours we are not obliged to retrieve any of the requested information.
Information relating to complaints about speakers and events is held within the University's faculties and schools. There is no central record of where this information is held, and we do not routinely record this information.
For the period outlined in your request the only way of identifying, extracting and recording the exact information you seek would be to interrogate our records manually.
To explain our position, the University has four faculties, taking two faculties as an example: the Arts and Humanities and Social Sciences faculties are interconnected with 12 schools. Information relating to complaints about speakers and events is held within these schools but is not recorded in the format it has been requested and there is no central record of this information. We have calculated it would take 2 hours per school to locate and manually interrogate each individual record to establish the total number of complaints, nature of the complaint, and the outcome.
We have calculated it would take in excess of 27 hours to respond to your request for information held in two faculties. We have not gone onto calculate the information held within our remaining two faculties. This exceeds the appropriate time-limit as outlined above.
To assist you in formulating a request to which we can respond, we would recommend reducing your request for information. We would be able to respond to question 1 for our Faculty of Medicine and Health department for all years. We would be able to respond to question 1 for information held within our Security department however this should be revised to include only years 2022-23 and 2023-24. Please note we have not considered whether any exemptions may apply to such a request, and we would signpost you to section 40(2) personal information. We would outline that we do not routinely record this information and therefore data will be limited.
We should also point out that any revised request you submit will be treated as a new FOI request, and the 20-working day limit will begin again.