Information Commissioner's Office

Department for Transport

13 June 2017, Central government

The complainant has requested information on overcrowding forecasts for the West Coast Mail Line in the HS2 Strategic Case. For some of the requested information the Department for Transport (“DfT”) relied on section 21 of the FOIA as it considered the information reasonably accessible to the applicant. The DfT withheld the information used for its calculation of demand and revenue on the basis of section 41 of the FOIA. The Commissioner’s decision is that the DfT has correctly applied section 41 to refuse to provide the information used in its calculations. For the information refused under section 21 the Commissioner finds that the information on trains, capacities and service patterns was correctly refused. However, for information on growth scenarios and assessments of likelihood the Commissioner finds section 21 was incorrectly applied. She requires no steps to be taken as the information has either been provided or the DfT has confirmed the information is not held.

FOI 21: Partly upheld FOI 41: Not upheld