West Midlands Police

The complainant has requested from West Midlands Police (WMP) information about terminology used in a policy document. WMP said that part of the request was not a valid request for information under section 8 (Request for information) of the FOIA. It advised the complainant that he already had information in his possession from which to answer another part of the request. For the remainder of the request, it said that the information was not held in a readily retrievable format. The Commissioner’s decision is that WMP was entitled to cite section 8 and section 21 (Information accessible to the applicant by other means) to refuse to comply with parts of the request. However, in respect of the remainder of the information, it failed to properly establish whether or not it held the information and therefore it has not complied with the duty at section 1(1)(a) of the FOIA. She also found a breach of section 17(1)(b) of the FOIA, by WMP’s failure to specify an exemption on which it was relying. The Commissioner requires WMP to issue a fresh response to the part of the request that asked for the information described in paragraph 26 of this decision notice, which complies with section 1(1)(a) and (if appropriate) with section 1(1)(b) of the FOIA. If doing so would exceed the appropriate cost limit under section 12(1) or 12(2) (Cost of compliance) of the FOIA, a cost estimate should be provided to the complainant together with advice or assistance on refining the request, in line with the requirements of section 16(1) (duty to provide advice and assistance) of the FOIA. If that part of the request is to be otherwise refused, because an exemption applies, any refusal notice issued should comply with section 17(1) of the FOIA.