Information Commissioner's Office

South Yorkshire Police

12 October 2017, Police and criminal justice

The complainant has requested email correspondence between South Yorkshire Police (“SYP”)’s previous Chief Constable David Crompton and South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner’s Office (the “PCC”) which relates to the Hillsborough inquests. SYP provided some information but refused to provide the remainder citing sections 31(1)(g) and 31(2)(b) (law enforcement), 40(2) (personal information) and 21 (information accessible by other means) of the FOIA. The complainant disputed the citing of section 31 only. The Commissioner’s decision is that SYP has correctly applied section 31(1)(g) with subsection 2(b) to the withheld information and that the public interest favours maintaining the exemption. The documents considered to be in the scope of the request were itemised and provided to the Commissioner in a spreadsheet. There are four documents where SYP relies on sections 42(1) (legal professional privilege) and 31(1)(a) and (b) (law enforcement) to forego disclosure. However, SYP did not formally cite these exemptions and did not advise the complainant about them, thereby breaching section 17(1) of the FOIA. SYP should either disclose these four items to the complainant or issue a valid refusal notice as set out in section 17 of the FOIA.

FOI 17: Upheld FOI 31: Not upheld