Information Commissioner's Office

Sussex Police

25 January 2008, Police and criminal justice

The complainant has been in correspondence with Sussex Police for several years in respect of issues he has had concerning his neighbours and their purported criminal acts against him. A large volume of correspondence has been exchanged between the complainant and the public authority and the requests are not concise. The Commissioner contacted the complainant to clarify what information remained outstanding and the following summary was agreed. Any crime reports the complainant’s neighbours had reported against him [the complainant]. Any correspondence Sussex Police had had with their Police Authority, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, Police Complaints Authority, Independent Police Complaints Commission, Wealden District Council, a local Solicitors or a Councillor in respect of him. The Commissioner considers that the requested material is a combination of environmental and non-environmental information. The environmental information should have been considered under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (the “EIR”) and the non-environmental information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”). Whilst there are procedural errors, which will be summarised below, the Commissioner considers that sections 40(1) and (5) of the Act and regulation 5(3) of the EIR apply and therefore the complaint is not upheld.

FOI 40: Not upheld