Cabinet Office

The complainant has requested, from the Cabinet Office, information about the allocation of funds for the Network North project. The Cabinet Office refused to disclose the requested information, on the basis of sections 21(1) and 35(1)(a) of FOIA (the ‘information accessible to applicant by other means’ and ‘formulation of government policy, etc’ exemptions respectively). The Cabinet Office has also told the Commissioner that if the request falls under the EIR, the requested information is excepted from disclosure under regulation 12(4)(e) of the EIR (the ‘internal communications’ exception). The Commissioner finds that the request falls under the EIR; regulation 12(4)(e) is engaged, but the public interest favours disclosure; and the Cabinet Office breached regulations 14 and 11, because its refusal notice didn’t cite the exception it came to rely on and because the Cabinet Office took more than 40 working days to provide the outcome of its internal review. The Commissioner requires the Cabinet Office to disclose the withheld information (ie all of the information in the four PDF documents that the Cabinet Office sent to the Commissioner, labelled as the withheld information), subject to any appropriate redactions for personal data. The public authority must take these steps within 30 calendar days of the date of this decision notice. Failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of FOIA and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.