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Dear Mr Brooke

Re: Request for Internal Review - Request regarding Eiger Ltd

Thank you for your s dated 1^st August 2009 and 11^th September 2009 regarding the response to your recent request to the Council.

In your s, you asked for an internal review of the handling of your Request. I have summarised the details of your appeal below:

I am sorry that you are dissatisfied with our handling of your requests and I have investigated your complaints under Stage 1 of the Council's Corporate Complaints Procedure. Further details of our procedure can be found on our website: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/services/councilgovernmentanddemocracy/councils/contactsconsultationandfeedback/complaints-and-compliments/complaints/

Identifying Emails as Spam

With regard to the first point in your letter, I can confirm that the Council did not receive your original request. As I explained in our previous correspondence, our mailsweeper program automatically flagged and deleted several emails to the following email address: [Westminster City Council request email]; some of these were generated by the What Do They Know website.

You queried why all the emails you sent from the site were deleted and asked for detailed information regarding the reasons for this. I can confirm that the email log maintained by our mailsweeper program indicates that the email was identified as spam by SpamLogic. To provide further details to the level you have requested would require the original email to be passed back through the spam filters on an individual basis. As this email was deleted upon receipt, we are unable to undertake this action and therefore no longer hold this information for the purposes of the Act.

You have also queried why, if the email were identified as Spam and then deleted, the Council is claiming that the request was not received. I would like to direct you to the latest guidance from the ICO in this matter, where he defines when a request is received by a public authority:

http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/library/freedom_of_information/detailed_specialist_guides/timeforcompliance.pdf

Page 2 of the guidance states:

"A request is received when it is delivered to the public authority, or when it is delivered to the inbox of a member of staff."

As advised previously, although emails identified as Spam are diverted to a separate folder, given the volumes received by the Council on a daily basis, this folder is not checked manually and all emails contained are deleted on a daily basis. As the request (and subsequent emails) was not delivered to the mailbox of any Council officer, it was not received by the organisation for the purposes of the Act and therefore no response could be provided.

With regard to your comment "you were made aware of this FOI yet still broke the law by not answering"; the council will only respond to requests received by the organisation. As per my previous response the Council is not associated with What Do They Know, we are not obliged to respond to requests made via this site, which are not delivered to the Council. Once we were made aware that requests had been incorrectly identified as Spam, we took all necessary measures to ensure that requests were delivered in future. We also responded to your request even though it was never formally received by us.

Having reviewed your request and the information provided, I am satisifed that we have fully reponded to all the issues you have raised regarding this matter. Please be advised that we cannot enter into any further correspondence regarding this issue. Should further correspondence be received, the Council may consider whether or not it is vexatious and/or repeated request as defined by Section 14(1) and (2) of the Freedom of Information Act.

Internal Review of Section 43

With regard to our application of the exemption under Section 43(2) and (3) of the Act, I have now reviewed the original department's decision to withhold this information and can advise the following:

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 grants the public a right to access information held by a public authority, subject to an exemptions that may apply (Part II of the Act). Where an exemption is applied, a public authority must still confirm or deny whether or not it holds the requested information, unless to do so would itself reveal exempt information.

In our response dated 28th July 2009, the Council refused to confirm or deny whether or not it held business rates records relating to any specific companies. It was argued that to disclose whether or not a company had dealings with the Council, and whether or not they had credits or debits on their account would in itself breach the provisions of Section 43(2) in relation to the Council's commercial interests and that it would not be in the public interest to do so.

It is our view that it is not in the public interest to reveal the specifics of any dealings with any specific company in regard to their business rates account for the reasons outlined in our previous correspondence. I have considered your representations regarding the public interest and it is my view the public interest in maintaining the exemption does outweigh the public interest in disclosure with regards to these types of records. Based on the above assessment, your complaint is therefore not upheld.

This completes the internal review into the handling of your Request under the Council's complaints procedure. Should you be dissatisfied with our response, you are entitled to contact the Information Commissioner under Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. For your reference, I have provided his contact details below:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45
Fax: 01625 524510

Web: www.ico.gov.uk

I hope this fulfils your request. Should you have any queries, please contact me at the address above.

Yours sincerely,

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Under the Data Protection Act 1998, Data Subjects have rights to challenge, alter or erase the inaccurate and unlawful processing of their information. In the first instance please contact The Data Protection Officer, Information Services, 101 Orchardson Street, London NW8 8EA. If you are not satisfied with our response you may contact The Information Commissioner: Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF