Information Commissioner's Office

Brockhampton Group Parish Council

25 June 2007, Local government (Parish council)

The complainant requested four items of information from Brockhampton Group Parish Council (the “Council”) relating to an area of common land called Bromyard Downs. The Council refused to provide this information however did not state, under the terms of the Act, its justification for doing so. During the course of the Commissioner’s investigation, the Council alleged that some of the information requested was not held by the Council for the purposes of the Act, that the requests were vexatious and repeated, that to respond to them would be too costly (when combined with other requests made by the complainant and other members of a User Group to which he belongs), that some of the information was “confidential” and that some of the information was available to the complainant by other means. The Commissioner has concluded that the Council was not required to provide information to the complainant in relation to three of the requests, however must provide some information in relation to one of the requests.

FOI 1: Partly upheld