Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council

Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council (‘the Council’) has applied regulation 12(5)(e) of the EIR to some of the requested information about the Hoyland West land development. This exception concerns commercial interests. The Commissioner’s decision is that the Council is entitled to withhold the information to which it has applied regulation 12(5)(e) and the public interest favours maintaining this exception. The Council has breached regulation 5(2) of the EIR as it has not made available all the relevant non-excepted information that it holds within 20 working days of the request. If it has not already done so, the Council must take the following steps to ensure compliance with the legislation: Redact the square footage figure from paragraph 16 of the Trustee Agreement document – this matter is discussed at paragraph 32 of this notice. Disclose the non-excepted information in all four Agreement documents and the 2016 email.