Luton Borough Council

The complainant submitted a series of requests to Luton Borough Council (the Council) which broadly focused on proposed developments in and around Luton. The Council answered a number of these requests under FOIA but then refused to fulfil a number of further clarified requests on the basis of ‘disproportionate effort’. The Commissioner has found that a number of these clarified requests seek environmental information and thus should have been considered under the EIR rather than FOIA. However, the Commissioner has concluded that it would be manifestly unreasonable to expect the Council to fulfil the outstanding requests which seek environmental information and thus the Council does not have to answer these requests. Furthermore the Commissioner has concluded that to fulfil the outstanding requests which do not seek environmental information would take longer than 18 hours. Therefore under the terms of FOIA the Council is not obliged to respond to these requests either.