Information Commissioner's Office

Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency

4 June 2007, Central government

The complainant made a request for the date of birth information of a number of registered keepers, whose names and address details had previously been provided to him following a vehicle enquiry request to the DVLA. The DVLA initially considered the requested information to be exempt under section 40. However, during the course of the Commissioner’s investigation the public authority indicated that to retrieve the information requested would exceed the costs limit under section 12 of the Act because the DVLA would need to instruct its IT contractors to carry out specific searches through its driver database .The Commissioner decided that although it may have been possible to retrieve some information within the costs limit this information would be exempt under section 40 of the Act on the basis that disclosure would breach the first data protection principle. He also decided that the DVLA has not breached section 16 of the Act. However the Commissioner has concluded that it did fail to comply with its duty under section 17(1) and section 17(7) of the Act as it failed to state in its refusal notice why the exemption applied or that it had a procedure for dealing with complaints about the handling of requests for information or the right to appeal to the Commissioner.

FOI 12: Not upheld