Information Commissioner's Office

Commission for Local Administration in England

16 January 2008, Central government

The complainant made a request to the public authority for information regarding complaints she had previously made against her local authority. The public authority refused the request under section 44 of the Act which provides for an exemption from the right to know where disclosure is prohibited under any other enactment. It said that the relevant statutory prohibition was section 32(2) of the Local Government Act 1974. The Commissioner has reviewed the information withheld from the complainant and has found that section 44 was correctly applied for the majority of the information. However the Commissioner has also found that the public authority breached section 1 of the Act by misapplying section 44 to the minority of the information not covered by the statutory prohibition.

FOI 1: Partly upheld