Sent by email only to: John Cameron 5 August 2019 Dear Mr Cameron Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (the EIR) ICO case reference: FER0829694 You request dated 5 November 2018 regarding advice given about exchange of land with RWGC. Further to our letter of 15 April 2019, I write to inform you that your case has now been allocated to me to investigate. This letter will explain how I intend to proceed with this investigation. Please accept my apologies for the delay in writing to you. As you are aware from my correspondence on your previous case, we are receiving high volumes of complaints and in the interests of fairness we allocate cases in date order. What happens now Where possible, the Information Commissioner prefers complaints to be resolved informally and we ask both parties to be open to compromise where appropriate. With this in mind, I will write to the public authority and ask it to revisit your request. It may wish to reverse to amend its position. If it does, it will contact you again directly about this. In any event, it must provide us with its full and final arguments in support of its position. Once I receive WPCC’s submission, I will consider its reply before either contacting you to discuss the matter further or preparing a decision notice. The request and response On 5 November 2018, you requested information in the following terms: “I wish to make a request under FOI/EIR in respect of the lease of land by WPCC to the RWGC. As you are aware the 1871 Act states that it is unlawful for the Conservators to sell, lease, grant or in any manner dispose of any part of the commons. The lease of land to the RWGC for a private carpark is a material breach of the Act, and unlawful. The Commons are kept “forever open and unenclosed” and the grant of a substantial car park for the private benefit of a golf club cannot be squared with this legal obligation. At the time of the sale of the lease, the charity trustees will have received professional advice, including the value of the land leased to the RWGC. The professional advice will have been in the form prescribed by charity law. 1. Copies of all “Qualified Surveyors Reports” and/or “valuations” and/or “valuation advice” (whether in formal reports/otherwise) procured by the WPCC up until the lease was granted. 2. If there was subsequent advice in respect of value, post the grant of the lease, I wish to receive that advice as well. 3. Copies of all other professional advice received at the time of the sale, (ie from Counsel or solicitors etc acting for the WPCC), for example that the sale was in breach of the Act, and unlawful. 4. Copies of all other information which is held in respect of the sale i.e. correspondence between management/trustees/advisors/insurers and so on).” On 23 November 2018, WPCC provided its response. It set out that WPCC has never entered into a lease or sale arrangement with RWGC for lands that comprise any part of Wimbledon and Putney Commons. WPCC then explained that it understood that this request concerns the exchange of use of two parcels of land that were used as car parks in the 1970s. WPCC provided a brief explanation regarding the exchange of land. WPCC confirmed that it was relying on regulation 12(4)(b) ‘manifestly unreasonable’ to refuse to comply with the request. It explained that it considered the current request to be a continuation of attempts to re-open historical decisions and represented a disproportionate burden on its limited resources. WPCC confirmed that it considered the balance of the public interest lay in maintaining the exception. WPCC also confirmed that it considered the requested information would also be exempt under regarding 13 (personal data). On 11 April 2019, following the ICO’s intervention, WPCC provided the outcome of its internal review. It upheld its reliance on regulation 12(4)(b) to refuse to comply with the request. The scope of the case The focus of my investigation will be to determine whether WPCC handled your request in accordance with the EIR. Specifically, I will look at whether WPCC is entitled to rely on relation 12(4)(b) to refuse to comply with your request. WPCC will be required to evidence the disproportionate burden and will need to persuade the Commissioner that the public interest lies in protecting the organisation from this burden. Regulation 12(4)(b) is unusual in that the identity of the requester and the purpose of the request can be taken into account when considering whether the exception is engaged and whether the public interest favours disclosure or maintaining the exception. You are, therefore, welcome to provide any arguments regarding the purpose of the request and also any further arguments regarding the public interest in disclosure of the requested information. It may be helpful if I confirm that the EIR specifically requires the public interest test to include a presumption in favour of disclosure in addition to the general principles of accountability and transparency for their own sakes. The Commissioner cannot make decisions regarding whether legislation outside of her jurisdiction has been complied with, however, she can take into account evidence that an organisation has not conformed to its statutory requirements when considering the balance of the public interest. Should you have such evidence, specifically with regard to the car park which is the focus of the request, it would be helpful to be provided with copies of this. Unfortunately, your original complaint file is attached to our complaints system as a .pdf file and I am therefore unable to open the attached documents. I would, therefore, be grateful if you could provide the following again:  “Plans to show the land which is the subject of the EIR request”  “Royal Wimbledon Golf Club agreement and deed of variation.”  Your request for internal review. I will also require your agreement with the scope of the investigation below. Regulation 12(4)(b) provides that a public authority does not have to comply with the requirements at regulation 5(1), there Commissioner will therefore only investigate WPCC’s reliance on regulation 12(4)(b) in the first instance. Should she determine that WPCC is not entitled to rely on regulation 12(4)(b), she will not order disclosure of the requested information. WPCC will be required to provide a fresh response that does not rely on regulation 12(4)(b). WPCC may subsequently rely on another exception which you will be entitled to dispute to the Commissioner. This is because the Commissioner will not have viewed the requested information as to require WPCC to provide this information would negate the purpose of regulation 12(4)(b) which is essentially to protect the public authority’s resources. Please contact me as soon as possible to confirm your agreement with the scope as outlined above, or if there matters other than these that you believe should be addressed. As soon as the scope is agreed, and the named documents are received, I will write to WPCC to request its submissions. If I do not hear from you by the end of the day on 19 August 2019, I will assume that you no longer wish to pursue your complaint and your case will be closed. Kind regards Victoria Parkinson Senior Case Officer Freedom of Information Complaints Department Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF T. 0330 414 6817 F. 01625 524510

Entire Thread

Topic	Date Posted	Posted By
ICO and WPCC	05/08/19 19:22:00	John Cameron
Re:ICO and WPCC	05/08/19 19:28:00	John Cameron
Re:Re:ICO and WPCC	15/08/19 09:39:00	Sarah Roberts
Re:Re:Re:ICO and WPCC	15/08/19 10:13:00	John Cameron
Re:Re:Re:Re:ICO and WPCC	17/08/19 15:35:00	Sarah Roberts

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