Office of Fair Trading
- Date 18 August 2008
- Sector Central government
- Decision(s) FOI 17: Upheld, FOI 31: Partly upheld, FOI 44: Partly upheld
The complainant requested information from the Office of Fair Trading (the “OFT”) about a case involving Seabeach Limited, which he believed the OFT was investigating. The OFT refused his request, neither confirming nor denying whether it held such information, under section 44 and 31 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”), in reliance on Part 9 of the Enterprise Act 2002. The Commissioner’s decision is that the OFT was correct both to rely on sections 44 and 31 to neither confirm nor deny whether it held the requested information. However, the Commissioner finds that the refusal notice issued was issued in breach of section 17(1) and 17(3).