Freedom of Information Request

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There is a lot of land and buildings adjacent to Cathays High School which could be used for the school rebuild and expansion - for example Companies House has a large multi story car park meaning their large open air car park is rarely used. There's also Maindy Barracks which appears little utilized. So to find out if Cardiff Council had approached Maindy Barracks about using some of their spare land, an FOI was sent to Cardiff Council. They responded (ref. FOI 16549) saying "Whilst it was considered to approach the MOD regarding the use of a proportion of the Barracks site at the southern end, it would have required re-providing a large existing and recently refurbished building which would have proved too costly and therefore it was discounted."

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This suggested Cardiff Council had made little or no effort to persuade the MoD to release some of their land but they didn't supply any information. So it was decided to send an FOI to the Defence Infrastructure Organisation (DIO), the operating arm of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which is responsible for the built and rural estate and get any information on the correspondence from them.

     

So on 19/09/2021 the FOI, shown in the email below, was sent to the DIO/MoD: