London Borough of Camden

The complainant requested information from Camden Council (“the Council”) about an alleged restructure/organisational review of the Council’s Housing and Property Services.
The Council refused the request as it did not consider it to be a valid request pursuant to section 8 of FOIA. 
The Commissioner’s decision is that the initial request was a valid request for recorded information.
The Commissioner requires the Council to take the following steps to ensure compliance with the legislation.
•    Issue a fresh response to the request. 
•    Provide advice and assistance, if necessary.
The Council 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 the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.

Following the service of the Decision Notice on 8 December 2025, the public authority provided the Commissioner with a copy of an internal review dated 11 November 2025 which had not been made available to the Commissioner previously. Therefore, the Other Matters section of the Decision Notice should have read as follows:

“There is no obligation under FOIA for a public authority to provide an internal review process. However, it is good practice to do so and, where an authority chooses to offer one, the section 45 Code of Practice sets out, in general terms, the procedure that should be followed. The code states that reviews should be conducted promptly and within reasonable timescales. The Commissioner has interpreted this to mean that internal reviews should take no longer than 20 working days in most cases, or 40 in exceptional circumstances. In this case, the Council over three months to provide the outcome of its review. The Commissioner reminds the Council of the Code of Practice and urges it to respond in a timely manner to internal review requests.”