Held on behalf

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Information "held on behalf" of a public authority

Section 3(2)(b) of FOIA states "For the purposes of this Act, information is held by a public authority if ... it is held by another person on behalf of the authority" [1]

There is a relevant ICO guidance note [2] which gives the example of research material being held by another.

This ICO decision notice [3] is particularly relevant, where market research response data held by a private company was deemed to be held by the 3rd party on behalf of the public authority, and the Information Commissioner partly upheld the Section 3(2)(b) appeal.

There have been a few cases at the Information Tribunal where Section 3(2)(b) was considered:

References

[1] FOIA 2000

[2] Awareness Guidance 12 - Information Caught by the FOI Act

[3] Decision Notice FS50118044 Leeds City Council