Me, Vexatious?
The Scottish Information Commissioner (SIC) has just upheld my latest freedom of information (FoI) appeal against North Lanarkshire Council (NLC).
Now I'll share the details of the SIC decision soon, but the whole business goes back to the summer of 2015 after the NLC rejected my request for information relating to 'exit packages' and the remuneration of the Council's chief executive, on the grounds that my request was vexatious.
For the moment here is a brief summary of SIC's findings:
Decision
|
The Commissioner finds that North Lanarkshire Council (the Council) failed to comply with Part 1
of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) in responding to the information
requests made by Mr Irvine. In particular, she finds that the Council was not entitled to refuse to
comply with Mr Irvine’s requests on the basis that they were vexatious and that, in doing so, it
failed to comply with section 1(1) of FOISA.
The Commissioner therefore requires the Council to respond to Mr Irvine’s requirement for review, in terms of section 21(4)(b) of FOISA, by 9 May 2016. |
If I remember correctly, this is the third of fourth occasion that NLC have lost appeals that I have taken to the independent Scottish Information Commissioner and you would think that instead of wasting all this time and public money, the Council would learn its lesson - and stop behaving so secretively and defensively.
After all if NLC had behaved openly and transparently, as they are supposed to under the FoI legislation, then just maybe the Council would not have avoided getting into such an awful mess with its pay arrangements, as happened back in 2006/07.
