The ruling comes after the council slapped down an information request about Town Hall asbestos from local blogger Nick Tiratsoo on the basis that it was ‘vexatious’ and ‘intended to annoy’, reports Rana Rastegari and Marco Marcelline
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has determined that Waltham Forest Council’s refusal of an FOI request, made by a local resident, was unreasonable.
Nick Tiratsoo, who runs the blog Waltham Forest Matters, emailed the council on the 5th of September 2023 questioning the council’s handling of asbestos in Waltham Forest Town Hall.
In his blog, Tiratsoo states that in 2020, as contractors were drilling in the basement, dust began entering the floors above and set off the fire alarms.
An anonymous complaint was made to the Health and Safety Executive who then stated that their team had not identified any asbestos issues during a visit. Subsequently, the case was shut down.
In July 2023, Waltham Forest’s head of governance and law, Mark Hynes, published a report about the asbestos management in the town hall, however, the events of January 2020 were not included.
In his blog, Tiratsoo writes that he found documents revealing that a specialist asbestos company had surveyed the Town Hall basement in September 2020 and “found that 83 high risk or medium risk locations remained” and “much” of this asbestos was amosite, a highly lethal variant.
He adds that the documents revealed that while the asbestos was mostly covered by a coat of paint, it was also present in the form of debris across the floor or exposed on walls and ceilings.
After seeing the documents, Tiratsoo says he wrote to the council, urging Hynes to investigate the company’s claims.
In late September, Hynes responded saying that a recent report he wrote made clear “that there is still asbestos in the town hall” and conceded that this “factual position” was “inconsistent” with an earlier statement made by a prominent ex-council officer that the town hall had been “fully stripped” of asbestos.
He then accused Tiratsoo of “focusing on a sentence that was clumsily constructed in hindsight” by the former council official, adding: “I can only assume that what he meant to say was that the basement was fully stripped of the asbestos that needed to be removed.”
In October, Tiratsoo sent a follow up email, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), requesting documents that Hynes had used to formulate his reply.
This request was refused by Hynes who stated that the request was a “misuse and/or abuse” of the FOIA, adding that it was both “vexatious” and “intended to be annoying, disruptive or have a disproportionate impact on a public authority”.
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Mr Tiratsoo then contacted the Information Commissioner (IC) to process his complaint. The ICO found that the council improperly handled the situation and had “erroneously” processed his request under the FOIA act rather than the Environmental Information Regulation (EIR) which it should have done.
Mark Hynes’ refusal of the request as “vexatious” was deemed by the IC as “neither reasonable nor appropriate”. The IC also found that the council “could and should have easily told the complainant that the information was not held within 20 working days of his request, rather than waiting more than six months … to do so”.
Ultimately, the IC stated that the errors “show that the council failed to apply the proper and due care and attention to dealing with this request, and the response was deficient and unsatisfactory”.
The IC also noted that the council have, in their revised response of 23rd May 2024, been clear that they do not possess the information requested, and that clarity “could and should” have been provided to Tiratsoo at the time of his original request.
In response to these findings, a council spokesperson told the Echo: “We accept the ICO’s findings. We are currently in the process of updating our complaints handling process, and as part of this we will ensure the ICO’s recommendations are actioned.”
In its findings, the ICO also found that the council wasted “significant time and resources” on a matter that “could have been resolved very quickly at the time of the request”.
In 2020, Waltham Forest was ordered to pay £265,000 in compensation to a man who was exposed to asbestos in the Town Hall for years after it was first discovered.
The man was an administrative worker for the council and he has since died from a rare cancer linked to inhaling asbestos fibres. He took the council to court in 2018 after finding out his cancer diagnosis.
The former employee’s court battle entered the public domain when the council refused another FOI from Tiratsoo. They said the documents he requested could be contaminated with asbestos.
Before that, in 2015, the council pleaded guilty to breaking two health and safety laws and was fined £66,000 and ordered to pay £16,800 in costs by a judge at Southwark Crown Court.
That court ruling came after the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in 2014 found there had been “no coherent plan to manage asbestos materials” and “no system of regular inspection”.
Editor’s note: This article was updated on 01/08 with further information from the ICO
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