It's getting tedious isn't it? Maybe I should write articles when there ISN'T a major NCC FoI fail instead?
But seriously folks, we have a further decision notice from the Information Commissioner upholding a complaint I made, further details of which can be found here.
As you can see, NCC is blatantly flouting the FoIA here. The ICO has previously issued a formal instruction to provide the info or issue a valid refusal citing grounds, which NCC ignored. They have since promised the ICO that they would provide a response by 25 March but haven't delivered. The decision notice says that they really, really must comply this time, with five weeks to comply. So that's jolly well told them, by George.
It seems that failure to follow the decision could result in the matter being registered with the High Court and further non-compliance would be a contempt of court. That I'd like to see...
The final point the decision makes is that NCC is unable to rely on the power to extend the time limit because it has failed to confirm that it is relying on a qualified exemption under the Act, merely saying that it may do so which isn't enough. Silly NCC.
In other FoI news, NCC has missed the deadline to respond to a meta request about how often it fails to meet the deadlines for FoI requests. As the requester invites NCC to agree, that is 'somewhat ironic'.
I placed an FoI Request with NCH who as you know are a shop front organization for NCC. Enviroenergy is another "Shop front" for NCC and despite speaking to Enviroenergy, staff informed me that its down to NCH to accept FoI requests.
ReplyDeleteIt took them the full 20 days to tell me that they don't have any links to Enviroenergy and that my FoI request should go to them instead.
I have a sneaky feeling that my FoI request which I will be honesty looks like its been tampered with as a chunk of data over a 3 year period appears to be missing, right in the "Critical period" that likely upholds my claim, it has raised some alarms over the request because I am paying for something that I know I shouldn't but NCC as usual send these things to court to make you pay regardless of the facts.
So they lie and edit FoI results.