My view is that many requests are dealt with informally, people in our kinds of jobs never hear about them, and that’s that. Legally, every request is one or the other. If there is any dispute or question, even if the applicant says they don’t want it to be dealt with under a specific piece of legislation, I’m going to make up my mind and apply the appropriate principles.

 

If legal action is ongoing, it’s still DP / FOI / EIR – the formal legal route is an alternative, and there are exemptions in DP and FOI which would cover that.

 

Tim

 

 

Tim,
Just to check. If the applicant says I do not want this under foi or dp or foi, would that still apply?

Could an applicant be given non personal information confidentially (not under foi dp or eir) and then be bound by a duty of confidence?

Also, if they ask for through legal channels (pre discovery), is it still foi/dp or eir.

Or neither? :)

I would go the dp route and keep it as clear as possible because the situation is already problematic.

Best

Lawrence

Lawrence W. Serewicz
Principal Information Management Officer
Room 4/10
Durham County Council
DH1 5UF
0191-372-8371

From: This list is for those interested in Data Protection issues <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thu Aug 26 09:30:19 2010
Subject: Re: [data-protection] Statistics

Public authorities subject to FOI are not legally entitled to answer “neither unless the request is verbal and not for environmental data – we might do this a lot of the time, but in principle, even a verbal request for non-environmental information might engage the FOI duty to provide advice and assistance. So a written request for information made by a member of the public is either FOI, EIR, or DP. It cannot be anything else. A verbal request for personal data might dodge Section 7, but anyone asking this kind of question is probably going to cause pain one way or the other, so it’s better to go down the right legal track than further infuriate the already infuriated requester.

 

So, to give my answer to Brenda’s question, I agree that DP is the route. You wouldn’t tell anyone else this information, if recorded.

 

 

I think it is neither, or either, but I don;t really mind. 

 

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