ICO orders disclosure of waste management contract | Practical Law
The Deputy Information Commissioner (Deputy Commissioner) has ordered East Riding of Yorkshire Council (Yorkshire Council) to disclose most of the information in a waste management contract that it had agreed with an independent contractor. Yorkshire Council had previously refused to disclose the information, claiming that the commercial confidentiality exception in regulation 12(5)(e) of the Environmental Information Regulations (SI 2004/3391) (EIR) applied. The Deputy Commissioner held that the public interest in disclosing certain information overrode the public interest in maintaining the commercial confidentiality exception. Although this case concerned the EIR, the issues raised in relation to the commercial confidentiality exception have general application to the parallel exception in section 43 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.