Home Office (Central government) [2024] UKICO 259656 (12 March 2024)
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Home Office
The complainant requested complaints-related information submitted about a named asylum seekers’ accommodation provider over a specified time period. The Home Office provided a summary of the numbers of complaints broken down into various categories together with the redacted complaint notification emails, but withheld the content of each complaint (or ‘service request’) citing section 40(2) of FOIA – the exemption for personal information. The complainant is concerned only with the service request information, which has been withheld in its entirety, but he is happy for any ‘personal data’ to be withheld. The Commissioner’s decision is that not all of the withheld information is personal information and that it can be partially redacted to remove identifying material; something which the Home Office accepted during the investigation. The Commissioner requires the Home Office to take the following steps to ensure compliance with the legislation within 35 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: Review the 73 complaints/service requests in scope and disclose all the information contained within them that is not classed as ‘personal data’. The Commissioner has provided the Home Office with two examples of the complaints in scope redacted to release information which is not personal data and would ask the Home Office to review and redact the remaining complaints accordingly. The Commissioner expects the public authority to take appropriate precautions to protect any personal data when disclosing information in a spreadsheet or similar format
FOI 40:
Complaint partly upheld
Decision notice: 259656
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URL: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKICO/2024/259656.html
