Information Commissioner's Office

Summary: The complainant requested copies of the original authorised expense claims for the Chief Executive from April 2010 to March 2011. The council directed the complainant to a table on the Whatdotheyknow website disclosing information from the expense claims and said that this was all of the information which it could disclose from the forms as the remainder was exempt under section 40 (personal data). It therefore applied section 21 to the information (information which is reasonably accessible to the requestor by means other than through a freedom of information request). The complainant however argued that he wanted copies of the actual expense claim forms themselves. The Commissioner's decision is that the council was not correct to apply section 40 to most of the information which it withheld from disclosure. He has however decided that a small amount of information is personal data which is exempt under section 40 of the Act. The Commissioner has also decided that section 21 of the Act was applicable to the information which had been previously been published on the whatdotheyknow website. However not all of the information was published on the site. Hence not all of the relevant information has been disclosed and section 21 is not applicable to this remaining information. The Commissioner has therefore decided that West Berkshire Council breached section 1(1)(b) of the Act in that it failed to disclose information which should have been disclosed in response to the request. The Commissioner has also decided that although the complainant asked for copies of the actual forms, the council did not breach section 11(1)(b) because the Act does not require it to disclose copies of documents themselves. However the Commissioner highlighted that the form and format of the forms is information in itself, and this has not been disclosed in the tables published on the whatdotheyknow website. He therefore requires the council to disclose this information to the complainant in addition to the information which he has decided is not exempt under section 40. The Commissioner requires the public authority to disclose the information held on the forms other than the information which the Commissioner has found is exempt under section 40 of the Act.
Section of Act/EIR & Finding: FOI 1 - Complaint Upheld, FOI 11 - Complaint Not upheld, FOI 40 - Complaint Partly Upheld