26 July 2007, Central government
The complainant wrote to the Local Government Ombudsman to request information regarding a complaint he had previously made against Herefordshire County Council. The public authority responded by explaining that the information was exempt from disclosure under section 44 of the Act. The public authority said that the relevant statutory prohibition was section 32(2) of the Local Government Act 1974. After considering the complaint the Commissioner has found that the statutory prohibition applied to the majority of information withheld from the complainant. However, the Commissioner has found that the public authority also breached section 1 of the Act because the statutory prohibition did not apply to all of the information that had been withheld. This decision notice is currently under appeal to the Information Tribunal.
FOI 44: Partly upheld