Information Commissioner's Office

Office for Standards in Education

19 November 2007, Education (College)

The complainant requested the Office for Standards in Education (“”Ofsted”) to provide the following information: a list of all providers of childcare to whom notices of intention to cancel their registration had been issued since September 2001: a list of those whose notices of intention had subsequently been cancelled, and copies of any unpublished inspection reports in respect of providers whose notices of intention had been so cancelled. Ofsted refused to provide the information sought in the first two requests on the grounds that releasing the information would cause prejudice to the commercial interests of those providers: Ofsted said also that it could not in any case produce the information sought without undertaking new work and creating new information, which it was not obliged to do under the Act. Ofsted said that it could not provide the information sought in the third request because to do so would breach the statutory cost limits as set out in section 12. It further said that it could not release information relating to individual childminders as to do so would breach the data protection legislation. In respect of the first two requests, the Commissioner did not accept the argument that providing what had been requested would effectively involve the creation of new information but did accept that provision of the information sought in the third part of the request would breach the statutory cost limits. The Commissioner accepted that providing the information sought in respect of childminders would breach section 40 (2) of the Act and that Section 43(2) had been correctly applied to withhold the information sought in the first two parts of the request.

FOI 12: Not upheld