Blog Now reports on an Information Commissioner ruling which stipulates that the names of staff refusing a request should be included in the response, despite one department’s attempts to withhold those.

Alistair Sloan writes:

“It described the DWP’s practice of not providing telephone numbers or contact details within its responses and how this makes it very difficult for the appropriate contact to be located within the organisation.  The public authority advised the Commissioner that it did not include these details so as not to breach the privacy of the non-senior staff involved; it described the staff in question as not being in public-facing roles.

“In Paragraph 36 of the decision notice the Commissioner states quite clearly that he does not agree with this approach.  The decision notice states that “if such staff are responding to requests made under the FOIA then he considers this to be a public-facing role which is unlikely to attract an expectation of privacy” (Paragraph 36).”