Mr Q requested from the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) a wide range of documents relating to or discussing the issue of prisoner access to IT facilities. The SPS responded by providing Mr Q with some of the information he had requested, but it withheld the remaining information on the grounds that it was exempt from disclosure in terms of section 29 of FOISA (which applies to information that relates to the formulation of Scottish Administration policy). Following a review, Mr Q remained dissatisfied and applied to the Commissioner for a decision.
During the investigation, the SPS withdrew its application of section 29 of FOISA and instead claimed, in terms of section 12(1) of FOISA that it was not obliged to respond to the request because the projected costs of doing so would exceed pounds 600. The Commissioner found that section 12 of FOISA did apply in this case, and so the SPS was not obliged to deal with the outstanding parts of Mr Q’s request for information. He found that the SPS had not breached of Part 1 of FOISA by refusing to provide the remaining information sought, albeit on different grounds from those ultimately considered in this decision.
However, the Commissioner did find that the SPS had breached Part 1 of FOISA by failing to respond to Mr Q’s request within the timescale required by section 10(1) of FOISA. He did not require
the SPS to take any action with respect to this particular failure in response to this decision.
Citations:
[2008] ScotIC 144 – 2008
Links:
Jurisdiction:
Scotland
Information
Updated: 21 July 2022; Ref: scu.434244