Home Office

The complainant requested information about a named individual’s passport application and associated correspondence, submitting that this person is deceased. In the absence of any firm evidence or authoritative official confirmation that the named individual is deceased, the Home Office refused to confirm or deny that it held the requested information, citing section 40(5), the ‘neither confirm nor deny’ (‘NCND’) provision for personal information. The Commissioner’s decision is that the Home Office was correct to neither confirm nor deny holding information within the scope of the request, by virtue of section 40(5)(b)(i) of the FOIA. She requires no steps to be taken as a result of this decision.