Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

The complainant has requested information about proposed changes to the Local Government Transparency Code. The above public authority provided some information, denied holding some information and withheld the remainder – relying on section 35 of FOIA (development of government policy) in order to do so. The Commissioner’s decision is that all the information engages section 35, but that the balance of the public interest favours disclosure of some of it. As the public authority failed to respond to the request within 20 working days, it breached both section 10 and section 17 of FOIA. The Commissioner requires the public authority to take the following steps to ensure compliance with the legislation: Disclose a copy of the document titled “Government response to consultation on changes to the Local Government Transparency Code 2015”. The public authority may redact each section titled “Government response.”