Number of the Thinking Skills Programmes run at HMP Wealstun, when

							                                                                 April 2012

                                                                 Our ref : FOI 75549
                                                                 Your ref:



                         Freedom of Information Request

You asked for the following information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ):

1)    How many prisoners at HMP Wealstun are awaiting enrolment on the
Thinking Skills Programme:

2)      How many Thinking Skills Programmes are being run throughout
the prison estate, and the length of the respective waiting lists:

3)    When the next Thinking Skills Programme is due to start at HMP
Wealstun and how many Thinking Skills Programmes are offered each year
at HMP Wealstun and when.

Your request is being handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
I can confirm that the department holds the information that you have asked for, but
unfortunately it is too expensive for us to provide it to you and would exceed the cost
limit under section 12 of the FOIA.

The law allows us to decline to answer requests under the FOIA when we estimate
that it would cost us more than £600 to identify, locate, extract, and then provide the
information that has been asked for. There are only certain activities that we can
take into account when making this calculation, but you may be interested to know
that the limit is equivalent to 3½ working days’ worth of work, calculated at £25 per
hour. Please be advised that the hourly rate of £25 per hour is set by Regulation 4(4)
of the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees)
Regulations 2004 and the regulation can be viewed at the following link:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244/regulation/4/made

In light of the above, in order to provide you with information to answer question 2 of
your request, regarding current waiting lists we would need to contact each individual
prison establishment delivering Thinking Skills Programmes (TSP). This would
involve contacting 88 sites in total (delivering this programme) to check the waiting
lists (if they have one). The data would then have to be collated and recorded in a
format which could then be passed on. If this took 15-20 minutes per prison to contact
and chase non-responses that is upwards of 29 hrs, plus the collation of the
information would exceed the 'appropriate' limit set in Section 12.

You can find out more about Section 12(1) by reading the extract from the Act and
some guidance points we consider when applying this exemption, attached at the end
of this letter.
While we cannot answer your request at the moment, if you wish to refine it so that
we can deal with it under the cost limit, then we will consider taking this forward. For
instance you may wish to consider narrowing the scope of your request possibly in
terms of the number of establishments you wish to seek information about. However I
must stress that even with a refined request the cost limit as defined under section 12
of the FOIA will have to be considered.

Although, to meet your request in full, would, as explained above, cost more than
£600, outside the scope of the Act and on a discretionary basis, in order to be
helpful, I am able to release some information which I hope will go some way to
meeting your request.

Question 1

As of 27 March 2012, there were 67 prisoners awaiting participation on the TSP at
Wealstun prison.

Question 2

There are 88 prisons which currently run the TSP and I have attached a list as an
annex.

Question 3

Wealstun run ten TSP courses per year, the next one is due to commence in May
2012 with further courses planned for June, September, October, November and
January 2013.