Information Commissioner's Office

Financial Conduct Authority

9 June 2014, Local government (Other)

The complainant has requested the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) internal guidance on the use of attestations as a supervisory tool and in enforcement cases. The FCA explained that, as attestations were not used as part of the enforcement process, it did not hold any information about their use in such cases. It did provide some of its internal guidance on their use as a supervisory tool but withheld the reminder under section 36 – prejudice to the conduct of public affairs. During the Commissioner’s investigation the FCA also applied section 31 – law enforcement to the same information. The Commissioner’s decision is that the FCA was wrong to rely on section 36 to withhold the information. However it was entitled to rely on section 31 in respect of the majority of the information. In respect of a very limited amount of information the Commissioner finds that section 31 is not engaged. The FCA is required to disclose this information.

FOI 31: Partly upheld FOI 36: Upheld