Manchester City Council

The complainant has requested details of rating list update schedules which were provided to the council by the Valuation Office Agency (the VOA) for specific properties. The council applied section 21 (accessible by other means) and told the complainant that the information was available from the VOA. The complainant then requested the information from the VOA. Its response was that it did not hold the information. The complainant then requested the information from the council again. It confirmed with the VOA that it does hold the information but with minor differences, at which point the council confirmed the application of section 21 to the information to the complainant. The Commissioner’s decision is that the council was not correct to apply section 21 to the information as it was not reasonably accessible to him from the VOA on this occasion. The Commissioner requires the public authority to disclose the requested information to the complainant.