Nigel Harper, 10 June 2009
FOI legislation says that public bodies must give people the information they ask for in an official request. They are allowed, though, to refuse the request once it has become too costly based on a formula of man hours used to find the information. Currently, an organisation can refuse a request if it estimates that it will take more than 18 hours to fulfil.The Information Tribunal has now said that an organisation which uses up those hours based on a misunderstanding of the original request can legitimately count them towards the total used as the basis of a refusal.
Source: The Register
