Cabinet Office

The complainant has requested information relating to a blogpost. The above public authority relied on section 36 of FOIA (prejudice to the effective conduct of public affairs) to withhold the information. The Commissioner’s decision is that the public authority has correctly relied on section 36 of FOIA and that the balance of the public interest favours maintaining the exemption. The public authority breached section 17 of FOIA as it took an unreasonable amount of time to consider the balance of the public interest. The Commissioner does not require further steps to be taken.