Royal Borough of Greenwich

The complainant requested information about a specific planning application. The Royal Borough of Greenwich (the ‘Council’) failed to respond to the request itself, but said that it had disclosed all the information held in response to an internal review of a related request from the complainant. During the Commissioner’s investigation, the Council revealed that a further document relevant to the request (the ‘pink sheet’) had been identified and this was provided to the complainant. The Commissioner’s decision is, on the balance of probabilities, that the Council has now provided the complainant with all the information it holds relevant to the request. He also finds that the requested information constitutes environmental information and therefore should have been considered under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR). By failing to recognise the request as a valid request and thereby failing to provide a response within 20 working days, the Council also breached regulation 5(2) of the EIR. The Commissioner does not require the Council to take any remedial steps to comply with the legislation.