Andrew Malcolm
7 Southover Street
Brighton BN2 9UA

tel/fax 01273-502624

Ian Troupe,
The Registrary
Cambridge University Offices
The Old Schools
Cambridge CB2 1TN

2nd July 2007
Recorded delivery

Dear Mr Troupe,

CUP's tax-exemption applications, 1940 & 1975:
Request under the Freedom of Information Act, 2000

Many thanks for your letter and enclosures of 29th June.

I am most grateful to you for the documents you have so far supplied (Geoffrey Cass's letters of 21/11 &18/12 1975, and the Inland Revenue's replies of 9/11 & 3/12 1976), but I am at the same time quite disappointed and surprised the learn that "the University does not hold any documents relating to the 1940 application."

Are you absolutely sure about this? As Cass himself says (21/11/75, page 4): "In a university, [its] 700 years of history is naturally exceptionally well-documented." The 1940 application (and its refusal) were momentous. Cass writes "when I look today at the evidence submitted by the University in 1940..." and he quotes verbatim from the Commissioners' decision. Obviously the 1940 papers were available in 1975.

If, after making further checks you are still unable to trace the 1940 papers, several freedom-of-information questions will then arise, to which I would be grateful for your answers. To whose safe-keeping were these important documents entrusted from 1975? When were they lost or destroyed? If the latter, on whose instructions, and how and why were they destroyed? Who were the CUP officers involved in the 1940 application and who might still hold personal copies of the papers or be able to recall those events?

Turning to 1975, there are evidently some other missing items too. Firstly, on page 35 of Cass's main application of 21/11/75, an internal slip has apparently been caught in the photocopying, obscuring a chunk of the page's second paragraph and quotation. I should be grateful for a full copy of that page.

Secondly, on page 1 of Cass's same letter, he refers to and quotes from a preceding correspondence between the Inland Revenue and Binder Hamlyn, presumably CUP's accountants. In particular the Revenue evidently sent CUP an important letter dated 23rd May 1975 via Binder Hamlyn. I should be grateful for a copy of this and of all other letters to and from Binder Hamlyn relating to CUP's 1974/5 application.

Thirdly, the Inland Revenue's letter of 9/11/76 refers to an earlier letter sent to CUP on 28th May 1976. I should be grateful for a copy of this and of any other such letters.

Yours sincerely,

Andrew Malcolm