Dear Mr Maxfield

Re: Request for Internal Review

I am writing in response to your email dated 21st October 2009. You requested a review of the decision by Royal Mail Group to refuse your request for information under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act. Royal Mail Group's internal review panel has reviewed this decision and I am writing to advise you of their decision.

In your request for information dated 22^nd September 2009, you requested the following information:

“I would like details of all bonus payments paid to Delivery Office Managers and below in the CM Postal area for the last Financial Year.”

Our response of the 21^st October 2009 confirmed that the information you requested is held by Royal Mail. However, this information was withheld under section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act. Section 40 protects personal data, linked with the Data Protection Act 1998; information must not be released where to do so would breach any of the data protection principles.

Following the review of your request, we believe that this exemption was correctly applied. Royal Mail Group considers that Section 40 (2) FOIA applies on the basis that the first condition in Section 40 (3) (a) (i) FOIA applies. Royal Mail Group has considered whether the disclosure would be fair and lawful.

We consider details of bonus payments within the scope of your request to be the personal data of Royal Mail employees. We do not consider that the disclosure of this information would be fair and lawful. The employees who received bonus payments would not expect details of their personal remuneration to be made available to the public. Furthermore, these employees of Royal Mail have a legitimate expectation that this information would be treated as confidential by their employer. Royal Mail therefore considers that disclosing this information would be unfair.

Section 40 is an absolute exemption in respect of subsection (3) (a) (i) and the public interest test does not therefore apply. Consequently, we believe that the information which you requested was correctly withheld in this case.

I hope that this suitably explains our response to your request. In the event that you are not satisfied with this reply, you do have a right to appeal to the Information Commissioner who can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Telephone: 01625 545 700

www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk

Cont…

26 November 2009