Corporate Services Division
DIRECTOR
Room E4.20
Castle Buildings
Stormont Estate
BELFAST
BT4 3SR
Telephone: 028 9052 8153 E-mail: [email address]
Richard Jackson
Your Ref:
Request-1663-
[email address]
Our Ref:
FOI IR 17877
Date:
29 October 2008
Dear Mr Jackson
Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Request for Internal Review
In your email received on 1st October 2008, you asked that I review the Department’s
decision to redact information, deemed as not relevant, within a document released
to you in response to your original FOI request. This request, in which you asked for
“information that has been created or provided to departments to assist them in
determining what category each request or requestor will fall under” was received on
11th August 2008.
As an alternative to pursuing the Internal Review route, your email suggested that “If
you would provide the full, unredacted, document in relation to a differently worded
request (e.g. to a simple request for a copy of the document itself, in which case
please treat this as such a request), please either accordingly provide the document,
or advice on how to phrase a request to obtain the document ……”.
I would however like to advise you that in order for a request to be deemed valid
under Freedom of Information legislation, it must meet certain criteria outlined under
Section 8(1) of the Act, ie –
“In this Act any reference to a “request for information” is a reference to such a
request which –
(a) is in writing,
(b) states the name of the applicant and an address for correspondence, and
(c) describes the information requested.”
A request for a copy of a document does not, by itself, meet the criteria outlined at
Section 8(1)(c) of the FOI Act, in that it does not describe the information requested.
As public authorities are obliged to respond to requests for information as opposed to
documents, I would advise that in order for your subsequent suggestion to be
deemed valid under the legislation, it would be necessary for you to provide a
description of all the information contained within the said document.
As you have not described the (additional) information you require, I have proceeded
to conduct an internal review of the Department’s decision to redact part of the
document issued to you on 5th September 2008. I am now writing to let you know the
outcome of my review.
I should explain at the outset that my role in carrying out such an ‘Internal Review’ is
in line with the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice’s Code of Practice
on the discharge of public authorities’ functions under Part 1 of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. Section 39 of the Code of Practice requires “a fair and
thorough review of handling issues and of decisions taken pursuant to the Act,
including decisions taken about where the public interest lies in respect of exempt
information.”
Your request of 1st October suggested that the Department should either issue you
with an unredacted copy of the document or “provide a formal refusal notice for the
part that you are redacting”. In considering whether the Department has properly
withheld this information and having reviewed the relevant documentation, I am
satisfied that the information was properly redacted and was not relevant to your
original request for “information that has been created or provided to departments to
assist them in determining what category each request or requestor will fall under”.
As the information redacted was not relevant to the information you requested, there
is no requirement for the Department to rely on the application of one of the FOI Act’s
exemptions to validate this redaction. There was no requirement therefore for the
Department to issue a formal refusal notice.
In summary, having reviewed this case, I am satisfied that the information redacted
from the document issued to you on 5th September 2008 was correctly withheld.
However, as a gesture of goodwill, I am happy to provide you with a copy of the full
un-redacted document, which is attached as Appendix 1 to this letter.
If you are dissatisfied with my findings, you have the right to appeal directly to the
Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be
contacted at -
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
WILMSLOW
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
Please contact me if you have any queries about this letter, remembering to quote
the reference number above in any future communications.
Yours sincerely
Deirdre Kenny
DEIRDRE KENNY (MRS)
Appendix 1
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUESTS TO
SECRETARY OF STATE (NI)
GUIDANCE NOTES RE CATEGORISATION
1. To encourage consistency ‘Categories’ rather than ‘Names’ should be
used in the ‘Requester’ column.
2. The following is a list of suggested category headings which can be
added to in the light of experience:
Member of public
Media (eg, Journalist)
Public representative (egs, MLA/MP/Councillor/Peer)
Pressure Group (eg, Campaign for FOI)
Business (eg, Consultancy firm)
Solicitor
Researcher (egs, academic researcher, local historian,
genealogist)
3. If a category is difficult to identify or cannot be substantiated easily, then
simply use ‘Member of the public’.
4. No attempt should be made to identify an ‘employee’ or ‘staff’ of the
Northern Ireland Civil Service.
5. If you need to use abbreviations or acronyms, then spell them out in full
in the first instance (per Daily Return), eg, Local Management in Schools
(LMS). Then cite ‘LMS’ on every other occasion in the ‘Information
Requested’ column.
6. In the ‘Information Requested’ column there is no need to state that the
request is made ‘under the FOI Act 2000’. It would be useful to note that
the request has Data Protection Act 1998 and/or Environmental
Information Regulations 2004 implications.
Central FOI Team
Public Service Reform Unit
1 March 2005
OFMDFM
