Freedom of Information – recent decisions

There have been a number of recent decisions of note in the world of freedom of information.

Some recent decisions have looked at the interaction between the Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act.

Doncaster Metropolitan Council has been ordered to reveal the names of some officials who repaid money to the Council following excessive expenses claims. The details of those who made voluntary repayments will not be disclosed, but the details of those who were convicted following a criminal prosecution. Such a disclosure would not contravene the Data Protection Act as the information is the result of a conviction which has followed due process and took place in the relatively recent past.

Braintree District Council has been ordered to disclose a list of council properties which it owned, only excluding addresses in respect of which a data subject had exercised their right under s10 to object to the disclosure of their personal data. The Council may also exclude from the list any addresses whose disclosure to a member of the public might reasonably be considered likely to cause distress to any resident of those properties. This is a surprising decision which seems to give priority to the right under the Freedom of Information Act. The ICO considered that whilst the information was personal data, there was not a breach of the data protection principles. In particular, he discounted the claim that it would be in breach of principle 2, use of data for a purpose other than that it was obtained for, as this would defeat all FOIA requests.

Finally, the Information Tribunal in the case of Dr Christopher Lamb v Information Commissioner has imposed a positive duty on public authorities to seek clarification of a request, pursuant to their s16 duty to provide advice and assistance to an applicant for information, in order to prevent the true nature of a requested to be “transformed into something other than what may have been thought to be its original ambit and purpose”.