Thursday, February 5, 2015

Letter from Maureen White (Information Commissioners Office (ICO) quoting Section 50(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act to refuse a simple FOI request.

Letter from Maureen White from the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) stating that the ICO has upheld the Civil Service Commissioner (CSC) latest refusal not to release information under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) (the ICO never does anything but find in favor of the CSC). What makes this decision so interesting, however, is that the ICO is quoting Section 50(2)(c) of the FOI to refuse this particular request - and when the ICO issues a refusal under section 50(2)(c) it also refuses to issue a Decision Notice. For those who wish to appeal to the Employment Rights Tribunal (EAT) this is bad news because without a Decision Notice the EAT will not accept an appeal.  In effect the ICO is barring what should be an automatic right of a individual to appeal to the EAT.
   It also does not record it as a statistic or publish its decision on the website, so nobody knows anything about it. But here is a copy of the letter they sent me informing me they were refusing my request under section 50(2)(c) 




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