Department for Business Innovation and Skills

The complainant made a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”) for a copy of an application form submitted for the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation. The public authority provided some of the information from the form but withheld the remaining information on the grounds that section 43(2) of the Act applied. Prior to the commencement of the Commissioner’s investigation, the public authority also applied sections 41 and 37(1)(b) to the withheld information; however, it only informed the Commissioner of these additional exemptions and not the complainant. The Commissioner’s decision is that the information is exempt under section 41 of the Act. He has not therefore gone on to consider other exemptions cited. In addition, the Commissioner has noted some procedural breaches of the Act.