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FoI and Environmental Information Regulations Exemptions

Freedom of Information (FoI) Act

Whilst the FoI Act creates a right to request specific information held by public bodies, it also creates a number of exemptions from that right.  There are two types of exemptions, absolute exemptions where the information can never be disclosed and qualified exemptions where information will have to be disclosed unless it can be successfully argued that the public interest in withholding it is greater than the public interest in releasing it.  The main exemptions that will apply to information held by West Oxfordshire District Council are:

Qualified Exemptions subject to the public interest test:

• Information intended for future publication.
• Investigations and proceedings conducted by us.
• Law enforcement.
• Health and safety.
• Environmental information.
• Personal information.
• Legal professional privilege.

• Commercial interests.
• Prejudice the effective conduct of the Councils affairs.

Absolute Exemptions:

• Information accessible to applicant by other means.
• Court records, etc.
• Personal information.
• Information provided in confidence by a third party where disclosure would give rise to an actionable breach of confidence.

Environmental Information Regulations

Information can be withheld if it would adversely affect any of the subjects below:

• International relations
• Defence and national security
• Public safety
• The course of justice, including court proceedings within a public authority
• Intellectual property rights
• Legal confidentiality of any proceedings within a public authority
• Commercial confidentiality designed to protect legitimate economic interests
• Voluntarily supplied information from people who have not consented to its disclosure
• The environment to which the information relates

Other balanced exemptions (ie where the public interest test is applied) include:

• Requests that are manifestly unreasonable or too general
• Incomplete or unfinished information such as draft reports or other work in progress
• Internal communications from within the authority
• Personal data that does not breach the Data Protection Act

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