Cabinet Office

The complainant has requested information from the Cabinet Office about all IT projects that have failed to obtain approval in the last 12 months. The Cabinet Office wrote to advise that it needed further time to consider the balance of public interest in relation to the application of section 43 but failed to provide any further response after this. The Commissioner’s decision is that, by its failure to provide a substantive response to a request for information, the Cabinet Office has breached section 17(3) of FOIA. The Commissioner requires the public authority to provide the complainant with a substantive response to his information request. If the public authority decides to withhold any information then the complainant should be provided with a refusal notice giving a full explanation as to why the information will not be disclosed, including details of any public interest test considerations.