Any one any good on FOI Please?

[AwaywiththePixies27]

It's a very long story and I'd rather not go into it and bore you all senseless.However, does anyone know if it is possible to obtain an email conversation if it proved a housing case should never have been taken to court? also, how would I go about legally demanding it. I've already asked for it repeatedly but to no avail. For clarification, I was arguing a point of law for 8months which got ignored repeatedly. They finally conceded a week AFTER the courts found in their favour. I hope you can help. Thankyou in advance.

When you asked before, did you specifically state you were making an FoI request? Did they tell you the reason for not supplying you with the information?

If it's a local authority, most will have an office that deals with FoI requests for all departments. There are rules they are obliged to follow.

1. Are you asking for information held by a public body? If not there is no FOIA right.
2. Assuming yes, then as said above you need to say you are making an FOIA request and be as specific as possible (there are some exemptions for confidential information and other things though).
3. If this is possible litigation and they refuse FOIA you still may be able to get a court order to disclose or ask them for pre-action disclosure if you might be suing them. if they refuse you can apply to a court for the document to be produced although this is much more difficult than FOIA route.
4. Is the email about you i.e. your personal data? If so you may be able to make a subject access request under the Data Protection Act 1998.

Hi there thanks for the replies. No I haven't yet asked using the FOIA. I have however, written to them and asked repeatedly in person for them to forward me the conversation to my email address. It's a conversation between my Solicitor and HB. (I'm a single parent and solicitor was only emergency help when faced repossession - I've left a message with her to see if she has a paper trail but she can't act for me anymore). I understand the confidentiality rules not surely it's just me and the solicitors details which can be blanked out?
N.b I don't want to sue them. I want to gather t he evidence to get the possession order rescinded.

If the information is about you then you have more rights to see it under the Data Protection Act than FOI.

HB being housing benefit i.e the local authority? So it is a request from a public body. I believe under the data protection act if the data is about you they have to supply it more quickly (costs £10) than under FOIA. They are allowed to blank out anyone else's information. If the emails you want are not about you though you cannot use the data protection law and have to use FOIA and even then there are exceptions.

Also look at the local authority's website as they probably have a freedom of information policy up there telling you how to apply.

Your solicitor should be able to send you the document whether they have finished acting for you or not. You might want to consider why the solicitor is being obstructive .

This is personal information so will be exempt under FOI. You should be able to get it under DPA because the conversation is about you.

Thankyou everyone. I will be asking both a.s.a.p. I have tests tomorrow as the whole sorry saga has stressed me out that much it has made me Ill. But will let you all know how I get on. Thankyou for the advice you have made it much clearer.

I guess this will be a little too late to be helpful - and excuse me advising, I am not a lawyer but used to be an FOI adviser - but a few points occurred to me:

1. It is not necessary for an applicant to specify under which legislation they are requesting the information - the public authority is supposed to treat all requests as FOI/DPA/EIR as appropriate.

2. The statutory deadline for response is 20 working days for FOI and 40 calendar days for DPA. If the public authority cannot meet the deadline they need to have a jolly good reason, and to write to you within the deadline stating what it is.

3. If there is a really good reason why you cannot have the information, they need to state what it is, citing the relevant exemptions and explaining how they apply to the data. They can't just ignore you. (There is, for example, an exemption protecting legal advice, but that shouldn't stop them sending information exchanged with your legal adviser.)

4. The next recourse if they haven't done any of this, or have done it wrongly in your view, is via the Information Commissioner. Much cheaper than courts as the ICO doesn't charge you! ICO website here