Freedom of Information Act Guidance for Parish Councils

The National Association of Local Councils publish a number of documents on their web site:

http://www.nalc.gov.uk/

One document is called "The Parish Council Governance Toolkit". It is quite comprehensive, and in Part 4 , pages 75  to 80, they cover "Freedom of Information Act Guidance for Parish Councils".

I compared my experiences of requesting information from Biggleswade Town Council with the "Guidance".

• "There is a duty on authorities to advise and assist applicants, which would normally require the authority to give some help to an applicant to better identify the information they request"

I was told  - " ...if you now feel that these documents are not what you require, please could you be more specific with regard to the precise document you require ....." 

• ".... requests must be dealt with within 20 working  days from the receipt of the request..."

I was told - "You email was responded to within 14 days of your request" - but the response did not provide the information.

I was also told - "and apart from the fact I was officially on leave" - that is not an acceptable reason for not responding in the timescale.

• If a request is refused, the refusal notice should give reasons for refusing the request and advise the applicant as to their rights of appeal - both internally by way of a complaint and, following that, by way of an appeal to the Information Commissioner.

I was told - " The remainder of the information as stated in the email will not be provided and for the purposes of FOI act will be treated as a qualified exemption. I have taken advice from the Information Commissioners Office and await your response on this matter".

Part of my response was:

If you are claiming qualified exemption and you taken advice from the ICO, you should have been told:

The reasons for withholding information must be explained to the applicant. A public authority must identify the exemption(s) under which the information is being withheld and explain why it applies, unless to do so would reveal exempt information.

If you refuse any part of a request for information there are certain obligations on how to inform the requester. These are provided for in section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Refusing a request under the exemptions

If you refuse any part of a request for information under the exemptions contained in Part II of the Freedom of Information Act, under section 17, you must explain which exemption you are relying on and why it is applicable.
The response to the applicant must:

• state that information is being withheld under an exemption
• specify which exemption or exemptions
• state (if it is not apparent) why the exemption applies
• if it is a qualified exemption, explain the balance of the public interest both against and in favour of disclosure

There are limited provisions in the Act enabling you not to give these explanations where to do so would itself undermine the exemption in question (section 17(4)). This must be used with great care: it must be fully justifiable in its own right as falling within the terms of an exemption. Public authorities will need to be able to fully defend the decision not to disclose the information should it be challenged by the Information Commissioner.



I recveived no response, so I appealed to the Information Commissioners Office. Their response was:

"It is clear that BTC has failed to provide you with a refusal notice as Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) requires....  Whilst we might normally ask a public authority to issue a proper refusal notice, it would be more effective and quicker if BTC were asked to treat your email of as a request for review, so I have asked BTC to do this."

BTC provided me with the information the day after I received that letter.