Information Commissioner's Office

Royal Mail

5 February 2007, Education (Other)

The complainant requested, firstly, the number of complaints made to a delivery office of the Royal Mail over a specific period of time and, secondly, details of how many of these complaints were investigated and what action was taken as a result. Both parts of the request were refused on the basis that the information was exempt from disclosure under section 43(2) (prejudice to commercial interests). The public authority also subsequently argued that responding to the second part of the complainant’s request would exceed the appropriate fees limit under section 12. The Commissioner concluded that section 43(2) was not applicable to the first part of the request but that section 12 applied to the second part of the request. In addition, he found that the public authority had not complied with section 17(5) as the refusal notice did not refer to section 12 as a basis for refusing the request.

FOI 12: Not upheld