Cabinet Office

The complainant submitted a request (‘a meta-request’) to the Cabinet Office for all of the information it held in relation to how it handled a previous request he had submitted seeking information held on the cloud based platform Slack. The Cabinet Office sought to withhold the information falling within the scope of this meta-request on the basis of the following sections of FOIA: 21 (information reasonably accessible to the applicant); 36(2)(b)(i), (ii) and (c) (effective conduct of public affairs); and 40(2) (personal data). The Commissioner has concluded that section 21 has been applied correctly and that the names and contact details of junior staff are exempt from disclosure on the basis of section 40(2). However, the Commissioner has concluded that although sections 36(2)(b)(i), (ii) and (c) are engaged the public interest in maintaining the exemptions does not outweigh the public interest in the disclosure of the withheld information.