Cabinet Office

The complainant has made 15 requests about different individuals and their involvement with the Prime Minister, his special advisers or officials from the public authority. The public authority aggregated the requests and refused them on the grounds that compliance would exceed the cost limit. The complainant did not accept that they were sufficiently similar to be aggregated. The Information Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority was correct to cite section 12(1) of the FOIA. However, he does find that the public authority failed in its duty to provide advice and assistance thereby breaching section 16(1).