Information Commissioner's Office

Financial Ombudsman Service

23 March 2017, Local government (Other)

The complainant made a request to the FOS for information relating to a complaint he had made about a particular company. The FOS refused to disclose the information under FOIA as it said the information requested was the complainant’s own personal data and therefore the absolute exemption at section 40(1) FOIA applied. It did however confirm that it was willing to process the request under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) and asked the complainant to make payment of a £10 processing fee under that legislation. This is however outside the scope of this Decision Notice. The Commissioner’s decision is that the FOS has correctly applied section 40(1) FOIA in this case to the majority of the withheld information. Where the Commissioner does not consider that section 40(1) FOIA applies she has proactively applied section 21 FOIA as she considers that this information would already be reasonably accessible to the complainant. The Commissioner requires no steps to be taken. This decision notice is currently under appeal to the Tribunal.

FOI 21: Not upheld FOI 40: Not upheld