Information Commissioner's Office

Summary: The complainant asked for internal emails sent to or by named council officers relating to a valuation. Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council (-�the Council-�) refused to provide any of the emails it held on the basis that they were excepted under regulations 12(4)(e), 12(5)(b), 12(5)(e) and 13(1) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (-�the EIR-�) and the public interest favoured withholding the information. During the Information Commissioner-�s investigation, the Council withdrew its reliance on regulation 12(5)(b) and identified that it held some information that it did not consider was excepted. The Information Commissioner (-�the Commissioner-�) found that regulation 12(4)(e) was engaged in respect of all the withheld information but that the public interest favoured disclosure of the majority of it. He found that part of the contents of one email relating to a particular subject had been correctly withheld using this exception. The Commissioner also found that some information was excepted under regulation 13(1). He did not find it necessary to consider regulation 12(5)(e) as he found that some of this information was excepted under regulation 13(1) and the remainder had been correctly withheld using regulation 12(4)(e) and the public interest favoured maintenance of the exception. He found breaches of regulation 5(1), 5(2) and 14(2) and requires the disclosure of the relevant information within 35 days.
Section of Act/EIR & Finding: EIR 5 - Complaint Upheld, EIR 5 - Complaint Upheld, EIR 12.4.e - Complaint Partly Upheld, EIR 13 - Complaint Not upheld, EIR 14 - Complaint Upheld