How many people have had their IP blocked from contacting the Council

Dear IW Chronicle,

The Isle of Wight council, in their response to your FOI request, have stated:

"...correspondence is not blocked electronically as complainants are able to direct their complaint to a nominated central point of contact, in writing this can be either electronically, by fax or letter."

I have documentary evidence that the Isle of Wight council have blocked my email communications, including requests for information under the Freedom Of Information Act, the emails have been immediately returned to me along with a statement that:

"Your message.... could not be delivered.... discarded, sender blacklisted"
(this has been copied and pasted directly from the councils rejecting email)

I currently have a complaint pending with the Information Commissioner regarding a FOI request which was bounced straight back to me with this message stating that I am blacklisted.

Yours Sincerely

Mr Figg

I have had my emails blocked at Stockton Borough Council. You can see all of my FOI requests on this website and you can see that they have not even replied to them.

They told me I could put new concerns or complaints in writing but when I did this they did not even acknowledge this. My concern was whether they had been informed that a vulnerable resident of a care home had made a call to the emergency services after a member of the care home staff "clipped" them.

Further my previous annotation the Isle of Wight council have now informed me:

"The council was not actively rejecting your, or any other, communications, and we were not aware that the system was rejecting them."

This is despite them returning my emails, for the last three months, with an attached message stating that my email had been "discarded" along with "sender blacklisted".

So although the IW council had chosen to install a system which discarded my emails unread, and informed me that I was "Blacklisted", the council were however, in their opinion, not rejecting my communications.

I have now made a request to the Information Commissioner in order to establish whether this situation, of rejecting emails that they hadn't rejected, is actually unique to the IW council: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fo...

In their reply to your FOI request the IW council have quoted from their Complaints Policy for Habitual or Vexatious Complainants as including:

j) Present the same issues repeatedly but never accept the explanation or outcomes. This can take the form of excessive phone calls, visits or written communications.

I had made a FOI request asking under what legal authority they had discarded my previous communication and labelled me as "blacklisted". The IW council also auto rejected this FOI request (which is contrary to their duties under the Freedom of Information Act) again stating their reason for doing so being that I was "blacklisted".

When I complained to the Information Commissioner the council stated that they had never received this FOI request as the system they had in place was set to automatically discard it. Which was exactly what I was complaining about, as their "blacklisted" message had stated just that when the request was bounced back at me.

They claim to have done so in error and further claim that they were unaware that I was receiving a bounce back message, stating that my email had been "discarded" as I was "blacklisted, every time I sent an email for the following three month period.

During that three month period I had informed two members of the councils own Cabinet that the council were doing this to me. I had also informed my own councillor.
I even told the IW council own Information service that they had done this when I made another FOI request on this very website http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/fa...

In addition I have documentary evidence that the councils Electoral Registration dept were aware of it, also the councils own Customer Support Team knew along with the Head of Community Safety Services, the councils Revenue and Benefits Service and the Islands MP.

Yet the council are of the opinion the knew nothing about it.

In fact the council put this system in place with no legal authority to do so, and have now refused me a review of the FOI request as they say the council does not hold any information relating to a decision to do this.

Needless to say I intend to continue presenting the same issues repeatedly as I do not accept the explanation or outcome as no answers have been given.

The irony is that they consider ME as being vexatious!