Information Commissioner's Office

City and County of Swansea

17 August 2017, Local government (District council)

The complainant has requested all information in respect of a Community alarm service provided to her late father from the date of the installation of the new machine to 13 August 2016. The City and County of Swansea (‘the Council’) provided a significant amount of information to the complainant, but were not able to provide a copy of the contractor’s quality plan as it did not hold a copy of the requested information and concluded that the outside party did not hold it on its behalf. The Commissioner’s decision is the Council is correct to have stated that it does not hold this information for the purposes of the FOIA, as it does not fall within the definition of section 3(2)(b) of the FOIA. However, in failing to provide a response within the required timescale for a request, the Council has breached section 10(1) of the FOIA. Additionally, the Council’s failure to provide an explanation of the key terms of technical information originally provided to the complainant, represents a breach of section 16 of the FOIA. The Commissioner does not require the public authority to take any steps.

FOI 3: Not upheld FOI 10: Upheld FOI 16: Upheld