Southampton City Council

The complainant submitted a variety of requests for information relating to enforcement of a specific bus gate. Southampton City Council (“the Council”) refused to comply with the requests on the basis that they considered them to be vexatious. The Commissioner’s decision is that the requests were vexatious and therefore the Council was correct to rely upon section 14(1) of FOIA to refuse the majority of them. However, the Commissioner notes that some of the requested information constitutes environmental information. He is satisfied that regulation 12(4)(b) is applicable to those parts of the requests, and that the balance of the public interest favours maintaining the exemption so far as the environmental information is concerned. The Commissioner does not require the Council to take any further steps.