Politics
MNH Criticised by Info Commissioner
An FoI was submitted for all documents and info held by MNH relating to various buildings at Bishopscourt
Manx National Heritage inappropriately applied exemptions to documents requested under Freedom of Information.
The Information Commissioner has ruled against Manx Museum and National Trust (trading as MNH) after a request for info relating to Bishopscourt.
An FoI was submitted for all documents and info held by MNH relating to various buildings at Bishopscourt including the main house, kitchen garden and cottages.
In particular the request was for information relating to ‘monuments or ancient monuments contained at Bishopscourt and any information pertaining to planning requests relating to Bishopscourt’.
Following a clarification, the request was considered to be that ‘MNH will hold a separate electronic/digital file on Bishopscourt for planning and monument related matters and it was confirmed the in the first instance provision of this file would be sufficient to meet our request’.
It then responded to the request but refused to supply some info citing exemptions for information already being accessible, some info being exempt personal information, some information was provided in confidence, some related to conduct of public business and some was for legal professional privilege.
This was then appealed by the applicant, but MNH confirmed its original decision before the applicant appealed to the Information Commissioner.
The Information Commissioner ruled that MNH had acted correctly in the way it handled most of the exemptions, but was not justified in refusing some of the information requested because it did so in a manner to say that the applicant already had the information.
Under the FoI act, public bodies are supposed to take an “applicant blind” approach.
The ruling said: ‘While the public authority may be correct to assume that the applicant could have access to the information withheld in this instance, if they were to take an applicant-blind approach they would not have considered this possible access and would have to consider the information in relation to whether the public at large had access to that information; i.e. whether the information is publicly available.
‘Public authorities must ascertain that the informations is accessible from a particular source and not assume that it is.’
As a result of this, MNH has been given 30 days to reconsider the exemption it applied for this and ‘ensure an “applicant-blind” approach is taken’.
You can read the full report here.
