Information Commissioner's Office

BBC

2 February 2015, Other

The complainant made a freedom of information request to the BBC for details on the salaries of a number of BBC employees and details of how they were recruited. The BBC initially refused the request under the section 40(2) (personal information) exemption. During the course of the investigation the BBC changed its position and disclosed some of the requested information but claimed that the remaining information was covered by the derogation and therefore excluded from FOIA. The Commissioner’s decision is that this information was held by the BBC for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature’ and did not fall inside FOIA. He therefore upholds the BBC’s position and requires no remedial steps to be taken in this case.

FOI 1: Not upheld