Information Commissioner's Office

West Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group

29 November 2017, Health (NHS)

The complainant made a freedom of information request to the West Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group (“the CCG”) for a number of separate pieces of information regarding Orthopaedic services. The CCG disclosed some of the information, explained that some information was not held and withheld some information under the section 43(2) (commercial interests) exemption. The Commissioner’s decision is that where the CCG has said that some of the requested information is not held she is satisfied that this is correct and that the CCG has complied with section 1 of FOIA. The Commissioner also found that most of the information withheld under section 43(2) was not exempt and should be disclosed. For a small amount of information the Commissioner accepted that section 43(2) was engaged and that the public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighed the public interest in disclosure.

FOI 1: Not upheld FOI 43: Partly upheld