Southend-on-sea Borough Council

The complainant requested information from Southend-on-Sea Borough Council (the ‘Council’) about applications made to attend a specified primary school, together with consultation about changing the admission boundaries for this school. The Council provided some of the requested information but withheld part of it, citing section 12(1) FOIA as it estimated that the cost of compliance with this part of the request would exceed the appropriate limit. It considered that the information requested in part 5 was exempt from disclosure under section 42(1) FOIA as it attracted legal professional privilege. The Commissioner’s decision is that the Council applied section 12(1) of FOIA correctly and so it was not obliged to comply with part 1 of the complainant’s information request. She also finds that section 42(1) is engaged in relation to part 5 of the request, and that the public interest favours maintaining the exemption. However, the Council’s failure to provide a response confirming that information is held in scope of the request and its failure to issue its refusal notice within the statutory 20 working days, represents breaches of sections 10 and section 17 of FOIA. In addition, the Council extended the time period to consider the public interest test associated with section 42 and failed to complete it within a reasonable timeframe, thereby breaching section 17(3) of FOIA. The Commissioner does not require the Council to take any steps as a result of this notice.