Surrey County Council

The complainant submitted four requests to Surrey County Council (the Council) seeking information about the numbers of temporary or externally contracted staff in a particular department. The Council provided some information to the complainant in response to these requests. At the point this decision notice is being issued the Council sought to withhold the remaining information on the basis of section 40(2) personal data (for requests 2 and 4) and argued that to provide the complainant with remaining information sought by request 3 would constitute the creation of new information. The Commissioner has decided that the information sought by requests 2 and 4 is not exempt from disclosure on the basis of section 40(2) and that for the purposes of FOIA, the Council does hold the remaining information falling within the scope of request 3, ie data about temporary agency staff and consultants. However, the Commissioner is satisfied that it would take the Council more than 18 hours to compile this information and thus it is under no obligation to do so by virtue of section 12 of FOIA.