Information Commissioner's Office

Redbridge London Borough Council

13 September 2007, Local government (Borough council)

The complainant requested from the London Borough of Redbridge (“the Council”) confirmation of the dates of ingoing and outgoing correspondence taken directly from what he referred to as “the Leisure Department Correspondence Database” (“the database”). The complainant’s belief in the existence of the database was based on telephone conversations between himself and officers in the Leisure Department which the complainant recorded. Although the Council dealt with the request as a general enquiry, it did communicate to the complainant that the database did not exist and therefore satisfied its obligations under section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”). The Council maintained this position during the course of the investigation and, despite the complainant’s recordings of telephone conversations, the Information Commissioner (“the Commissioner”) is satisfied that the database does not exist and therefore the information requested is not held.

FOI 1: Not upheld