Freedom of Information Request Refused. But we’re still Trying.

We submitted a request for the publication of the report into the behaviour of the mayor and councillors at a meeting of the Budget Sub-Committee, a meeting that occurred over 18 months ago.

Readers may recall that, following a fractious meeting of the committee, which resulted in both the mayor and a councillor making allegations against one another, an expensive report was commissioned from an outside contractor. The costs of this, we were informed, ran into the tens of thousands of pounds and took a year to complete.

Newham chose not to release the report. So, we submitted an FOI. Eventually we received a response, which said “no”.

We put in a request for an internal review. This was completed and the request was again refused.

We have now submitted the matter to the Information Commissioner.

It will take some time, but we continue to seek out the truth as to what happened.