Highways England (Central Government): ICO 23 Jun 2021

The complainant has requested Highways England (HE) to disclose the information upon which it relied to negate a previous FOIA response in 2016 (part one of the request) and any information about the termination of the pain/gain process being due to insurers’ unwillingness to pay the relevant costs (part two of the request). It responded by saying that the 2016 response was an error and apologised to the complainant for this. Later it stated that it holds no recorded information. During the Commissioner’s investigation HE adopted the Commissioner’s interpretation of the request and what recorded information could potentially fall in scope and conducted searches of its records. For part one of the request, HE disclosed all the recorded information it holds, except third party personal data in accordance with section 40 of the FOIA and an excel spreadsheet under section 43. For part two, it advised the Commissioner that it does not hold the requested information. For part one of the request, no further concerns were raised by the complainant (any further correspondence has not been relevant to this request), so the Commissioner has not investigated further. For part two of the request, the Commissioner is satisfied that, on the balance of probabilities, HE does not hold any recorded information. In terms of procedural matters, the Commissioner has recorded breaches of section 1 and 10 of the FOIA. Overall, the Commissioner does not require any further action to be taken.
FOI 10: Complaint upheld FOI 1: Complaint partly upheld

Citations:

[2021] UKICO IC-44614

Links:

Bailii

Jurisdiction:

England and Wales

Information

Updated: 26 October 2022; Ref: scu.665903