Tower Hamlets Homes

The complainant asked Tower Hamlets Homes (the “public authority”) to provide information relating to its technical services. The public authority provided some information but maintained that further information was exempt by virtue of section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the “Act”) (cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit). During the investigation the public authority sought to aggregate this request with two other requests made by the complainant thereby exempting all three by virtue of section 12 (cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit). It also sought to introduce section 44 (prohibitions of disclosure) of the Act. The Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority was not able to aggregate the requests, it could not apply section 12 and, also, that it could not rely on section 44. The public authority’s handling of the request also resulted in breaches of certain procedural requirements of the Act as identified in this Notice.