Costs Associated with Highways Claim - Church Street, Foston - Find a freedom of information request

Please supply me with all related cost information relating to legal claim MUN/REZ011.4305 and the issue relating to highways surface drainage on Church Street in Foston.

This information should include but not be limited to:

• Legal costs associated with LCC Legal Services including that of Caroline Saddiquee, Mark Keal an any other person charged from Legal Services to their Client Highways as part of this claim
• Costs associated with sending/communicating employees including engineers, highways employees, sand bags, correspondence with Richard Fenwick, correspondence with Customer Services and works teams.
• Costs associated with sending sub-contractors including works teams, professionals such as Civil Engineers, drone surveys, jetting and CCTV

Any other cost associated with this claim/asset issue

The Council considers there are three parts to your request; the time and costs spent by the Lawyers, the time and the costs of highways officers and the outlay of both Legal Services and the Council as the relevant Highways Authority.

Lincolnshire County Council does operate an internal charging mechanism for its in-house Legal Team and therefore does notionally have a means of valuing the time its in-house legal team spent on the case. The value attributed to that time on this case between 11 May 2021 and 28 December 2021 was £5,824.75.

However, in the event this matter becomes litigated, and in pursuance of the case Re Eastwood (Deceased), Legal Services Lincolnshire as the in-house team employed by Lincolnshire County Council are entitled to recover their legal fees as though they were an independent solicitor and as such would seek to recover them at the current guideline hourly rates for solicitors.

Ms Caroline Siddiquee and Mr Mark Keal are both solicitors with over 8 years' experience and therefore their legal fees will be claimed at the rate of £255 per hour plus VAT. At this rate, taking into account the time already spent on this matter, legal costs incurred are in the region of £21,600. The report regarding flooding of the site was commissioned by the Council at a cost of £4,800 plus VAT. The time and costs expense for sending a road inspection officer is not information held by the Council. To answer this question would require the Council to create information by carrying out a calculation and this is not a valid request for information within the meaning of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Costs of Works

• Gully tanker jobs - £71.18 x 4 hours - £284.72
• ER response for sandbags - £87.74 x 5 - £438.70
• Ajet investigation works – costs not confirmed until final application for HI21 (which could be up to 6 months after April) but estimate - £800
• Minor Works Gang job to attend and carry out alleviation works, over 2 visits, again costs not confirmed but would estimate - £2000

Total estimate so far (since the first jetting attendance last year) - £3523.42

This doesn’t include any of the testing and design work on the final solution