Information Commissioner's Office

Colchester Borough Council

29 March 2007, Local government (Borough council)

The complainant has been corresponding with the public authority since March 2004 regarding a newspaper article published previously, which reported that the Chief Executive had saved the public authority £3 million. As the Act came into force, the complainant made an information request to the public authority and requested a detailed breakdown of the savings. As this correspondence continued, the public authority provided a substantial amount of budgetary information. The complainant remained dissatisfied because he required the information about the reported savings in a similar format to a budget report he received from the public authority in March 2004. The public authority explained the difficulties in analysing the data and producing it in the manner the complainant described and stated that to do so would exceed the cost limit. The Commissioner’s investigation established that the information requested by the complainant was not held by the public authority. The Commissioner decided that, although considerable advice and assistance was provided, the public authority did not inform or make it clear to the complainant that it did not hold the information in the manner specified in the complainant’s request and therefore breached section 1 of the Act.

FOI 1: Upheld