FOI enforcement developments

FOIMan notes a couple of developments on FOI enforcement.

A brief note of two important enforcement actions taken by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the last few weeks.

First off, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has been given a Monetary Penalty Notice of £120,000 for accidentally disclosing personal data. The FOI Officer apparently failed to notice that a spreadsheet contained a pivot table which held personal data in it. This is similar of course to a previous MPN given to the London Borough of Islington a few years ago. The council was criticised in particular for failing to train its FOI Officers adequately.

Even more notably, and in a first, it was reported this week that the ICO is prosecuting a councillor with Thanet District Council in Kent under s.77. Whilst this provision has always been there to sanction the destruction, hiding or alteration of records to avoid FOI, it has never been used by the ICO. The case will be heard in September, so one to watch.