I am writing to make a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Please provide the following information for the financial years 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24:

1. The number of applications made under section 21A of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 in which your local authority has been involved (as applicant, respondent, or other party).

2. The total legal costs incurred by the authority in relation to those s21A applications (including in-house and external representation).

3. If available, a breakdown of those costs by year and/or by internal vs external legal spend.

We are unable to report on this, and to provide the information we would have to manually review all cases opened for Wokingham during 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23 and 2023/24.
This information is not held in the same place in each file and would need to be located in each clients’ record, there would be 49 files to review. The Strategic Lead from the Joint Legal Team has advised from experience it takes a minimum of 2 hours to review. The minimum total time would be 49 x 2 which would equate to 98 hours. This is above the appropriate limit of 18 hours to complete the request.

If you would like to pay for the work to be carried out, please let us know and we will supply a more accurate costing for this. No work would be done until payment has been received. Alternatively, if you would like to re-submit your request, we would be able to answer one of the questions and supply you with one years’ worth of information within the 18 hours. If you would like to resubmit, please let us know which question and which year you would like.