Secretary of State for the Home Department (Home Office)

The complainant requested information from  the Home Office about information provided by Facewatch. Section 10(1) of FOIA states that a public authority must respond to a request within 20 working days. Section 17(3) of FOIA states that where a public authority is relying on a qualified exemption, it can have a “reasonable” extension of time to consider the public interest in maintaining the exemption or disclosing the information.
The Commissioner does not consider there to be any exceptional circumstances and finds that, by failing to respond to the request within a reasonable time frame, the public authority has breached section 17(3) of FOIA. The public authority must provide a substantive response to the request in accordance with its obligations under FOIA.