Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council

The complainant requested information from Wigan Borough Council (“the council”) that had been referred to in a particular press article. The unauthorised disclosure of some documents had resulted in the dismissal of a council employee and the complainant wanted to see the information that contained the quoted comment in the newspaper article that the community should be “kept out of the decision-making process”. The request was initially refused using an exemption under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the FOIA”), however, when the council realised that the complainant’s interest was limited only to the particular quoted comments, it said that this information was not held. The Commissioner’s decision is that, on the balance of probabilities, the requested information was not held by the council. The Commissioner does not require any steps to be taken.