ICO requires Wirral Council to supply internal audit report within 35 days
The Information Commissioner’s Office (which I will refer to as ICO) have issued a decision notice about a Freedom of Information Act request made by Nigel Hobro to Wirral Council. The unique number for this decision notice is FS50559883. It’s not yet on ICO’s website but should be in the near future. ED: Updated 04/09/2015 I looked on ICO’s website and it has been published since this article was written and decision notice FS50559883 can be viewed on ICO’s website.
The Freedom of Information Act request is for an “incomplete internal audit investigation report” and was originally made on the 20th August 2014.
As you can read on the whatdotheyknow.com website Surjit Tour (Monitoring Officer) of Wirral Council refused this request on the 26th November 2014 and at internal review it was refused by Eric Robinson (Chief Executive) on the 4th June 2015.
The reasons given by both Surjit Tour and Eric Robinson for not supplying the information requested (both times an apology was given for taking too long to reach a decision) were two-fold:
- section 36(2)(c) Prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs
- section 40(2) Personal information
The decision notice shows that ICO disagrees with the first of those reasons (section 36(2)(c)), but agrees with the second reason for part of the information (section 40(2)).
Interestingly the Information Commissioner’s Office agreed with Wirral Council that applying section 36(2)(c) was reasonable but disagreed with the public interest test element.
ICO requires Wirral Council to take the action below within 35 calendar days of the date of the decision notice dated the 24th August 2015. This is assuming that Wirral Council do not appeal the decision:
- "Disclose the withheld information with redactions made under section 40(2) for the names of individuals within the report"
If you click on any of the buttons below, you’ll be doing me a favour by sharing this article with other people.