Treasury Solicitors

The complainant requested that all the information that he was not provided under two previous Subject Access Requests (which concerned him) was provided to him by the public authority under the Freedom of Information Act. The public authority provided a schedule of the information that was held, provided some information and withheld other information by virtue of section 42(1) [legal professional privilege] and section 40(2) [third party personal data]. The public authority upheld its position in its internal review. The complainant referred this case to the Commissioner. During the course of his investigation, some of the information was provided to the complainant that was originally withheld under the exemptions. The complainant asked the Commissioner to consider the residue of the information. The Commissioner has determined that for all the information withheld under section 42(1) the exemption was engaged and the public interest favoured the maintenance of the exemption. For the information withheld under section 40(2), the Commissioner has concluded that some of the information was correctly withheld and other information was not. The Commissioner has also found a number of procedural breaches and requires that the public authority discloses some of the information that it has withheld within 35 calendar days.