Information Commissioner's Office

Home Office

8 April 2015, Central government

The complainant requested for each of the Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) for which the Home Office (HO) is responsible, its performance against the published Operating Standards for IRCs and the number of performance points deducted in terms of the performance regime set by the contracts or service level agreements (SLAs), and any associated financial deductions applied to the service providers. The Commissioner did not uphold HO’s application of the section 43(2) and section 41(1) FOIA exemptions to the performance information held and also to the performance points information held except that which would make public parts of the business models used by HO and its contractors. He did however uphold HO’s application of the section 43 FOIA exemption to information the disclosure of which would reveal parts of the business models used by HO and its contractors. He also decided that the balance of the public interest favoured maintaining the exemption for this information. The Commissioner also decided that a small amount of information should be redacted from the information to be disclosed where not doing so would disclose personal information proper to be withheld under the section 40(2) FOIA exemption. For the avoidance of doubt the Commissioner set out his decision in detail in a confidential schedule which has been provided to HO only. HO provided the Commissioner, for the purposes of his investigation, with the requested information for three IRCs - those at Colnbrook, Brook House and Yarl’s Wood - for him to consider as a ‘test case’ which he has done. He now requires HO to apply disclosure principles set out in this Decision Notice to the corresponding information held by HO for its other IRCs, whether publicly or privately operated. The Commissioner requires HO to disclose to the complainant the performance information and the performance points information specified in the confidential schedule to this decision. Also, to apply the same principles to the corresponding information held about other IRCs but which HO did not provide to the Commissioner for his consideration.

FOI 41: Upheld FOI 43: Partly upheld