Key information
Request reference number: MGLA061016-8344
Date of response:
Summary of request
Hi, I would be grateful if you could provide information on the following points:
1. Please disclose the type of information you hold on EU rough sleepers (i.e. a description of the information rather than the information itself)
2. Please disclose the type of information you hold on EU rough sleepers that have been removed by way of administrative removal by the Home Office (i.e. a description of the information rather than the information itself)
3. Please disclose any information you have or which has been shared with you by GLA rough sleeping service providers (past or present) regarding EU rough sleepers that have been referred to the home office.
I remind the GLA of ICO guidance regarding interpretation of requests for information. The following are taken from the Commissioner's guidance:
- “Where an authority receives a request with more than one possible meaning, it must go back to the requester to ask them to clarify which interpretation is correct.”
- “When an authority receives an unclear or ambiguous FOIA request, its Section 16 duty to provide advice and assistance will be triggered and it must go back to the requester to ask for clarification.”
- “The authority should never attempt to guess which meaning the requester actually intended. Even if it responds correctly to one possible objective reading of a request it may still find itself in breach of the legislation if it fails to identify an alternative interpretation which is equally valid.”
- the authority must not allow its own views about the validity of any criticisms or allegations to influence how it reads the request; its sole focus must be on the information that is being requested”
- “The requester cannot reasonably be expected to have a detailed knowledge of the way in which an authority organises and structures its records, or the terminology it uses to describe and classify information internally. Authorities must therefore make allowances for this when reading requests.
- They should not exclude material from the scope of an otherwise clear request because the requester has described the information in a different way or has failed to use the ‘correct’ terminology.”
Related documents
MGLA061016-8344 - FOI response
MGLA061016-8344 - Internal Review response
MGLA061016-8344 - FOI attachment