Email Letter
From
Date
Therese Pritchard
26 February 2025
Phone
Email
1300 002642
xxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
To
Organisation
Email
Dale Webster
xxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xxx
Our Ref: 2473729
Dear Dale,
Notice of decision – request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic)
1. This letter contains my decision on behalf of the City of Greater Bendigo in relation to your request for
documents under the
Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) (
FOI Act).
2. In making my decision, I have considered the object of the FOI Act, which is to create a general right
of access to information, limited only by exceptions and exemptions necessary to protect essential
public interests, privacy, and business affairs.
3. My decision and reasons are provided below. A schedule of documents, which outlines my decision is
also attached to this letter.
Background
4. On 5 November 2024 you requested:
Approved planning permit and any amendments including drainage plans for staged subdivision of land
into 140 lots at the registered address of Lot A Sawmil Road, HUNTLY 3551. (May also be known as 3
Aspiring Drive, HUNTLY) Permit number DS/662/2018, AM/662/2018/A.
Date range September 11, 2018, to August 10, 2020.
5. On 25 November 2024 we advised your request was not valid under section 17(2) of the FOI Act
because the terms of your request were not clear enough to enable us to reasonably identify documents
relevant to your request and you had not paid the application fee.
6. Having conducted a preliminary search for documents and to assist you in making your request valid,
we proposed the following scope which we believe may capture the terms of your original request.
A copy of documents between 11 September 2018 and 20 March 2024 contained within the city’s
electronic document management system in relation to: the approved Planning Permit and any
amendments, DS/662/2018 and AM/662/2018/A including drainage plans for staged subdivision of land
into 140 lots at the registered address of Lot A Sawmil Road, HUNTLY 3551
7. On 26 November 2024 we received your application fee and on 11 December 2024 you confirmed the
scope.
Greater Bendigo City Council
Address: Galkangu Bendigo Gov Hub
189-229 Lyttleton Terrace Bendigo Vic 3550
Postal Address: PO Box 733, Bendigo Vic 3552
T:
1300 002 642
If you are
please call
deaf, hearing or speech impaired,
E: xxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
us via the National Relay Service
W: www.bendigo.vic.gov.au
on 133 677 or
www.relayservice.com.au
A.B.N. 74 149 638 164
Documents relevant to your request
8. A thorough and diligent search for documents within the terms of your request was undertaken by the
Planning unit.
9. On this basis, we located 75 documents relevant to the terms of your request.
10. These documents include subdivision plans, referral responses, drainage plans, bushfire management
plans, emails and letters.
Decision on each document
11. I have decided to:
(a) release 11 documents in ful
(b) release 64 documents in part with s25 personal details exempted by consent
Reasons for decision
Section 25 of the FOI Act – deletion of exempt or irrelevant information
12. Section 25 of the FOI Act requires an agency to grant access to an edited copy of a document
containing exempt or irrelevant information if it is practicable for the agency to delete that information,
and if the applicant is agreeable to receiving an edited copy.
13. Determining what is ‘practicable’ requires us to consider the effort involved in making the relevant
deletions and the effectiveness of those deletions – that is, whether editing the document would render
it meaningless.
14. Some of the information in the documents is not relevant to the scope of your request because the
information relates to personal details including names, job titles, phone numbers signatures and emails
which you agreed to exclude from the scope of your request`.
15. In the current circumstances, I found it was practicable to provide you with an edited copy of the
documents with exempt information deleted.
16. Before I can provide access to the documents, you must pay access charges of $
17. We calculated these charges on the following basis:
Type of charge
How the charge was calculated
No. of hours
Cost per hour
Sub-total
Searching for documents
1
$24.50
$24.50
No. of hours
Cost per hour
Sub-total
Supervision time
Access charges
$24.50
Deposit previously paid
Total access charges
$24.50
18. An invoice wil be sent directly from our Finance team.
Receiving a copy of the documents
19. I note that in this instance third parties have the right to apply for a review of my decision to release
their information. The parties have 60 days from the date they are notified of this decision to apply for
a review.
20. I cannot release this information until the end of the 60-day appeal period and I have confirmed that no
application for review has been made by a third party.
21. As I noted previously, I cannot release certain documents to you until the expiry of the 60-day third
party appeal period. If you believe you wil be unsatisfied with my decision you should make an
application to the Information Commissioner to preserve your review rights.
22. The Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner’s (
OVIC) website has a review form you may
download, which contains more information about the review process and what you can expect. OVIC’s
contact details are:
Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner
PO Box 24274
Melbourne VIC 3001
Email: xxxxxxxxx@xxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
Phone: 1300 00 6842 (1300 00 OVIC)
www.ovic.vic.gov.au
More information
23. If you have any questions about this decision, please contact me on 1300 002 642 or by email at
xxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx.xx.
Yours sincerely
FOI Officer
Attachments
1. Schedule of documents
