The Information Commissioner’s Office has ordered the financial services regulator to look again at its response to a Freedom of Information request about staff salaries.

An FoI request submitted in August last year asked the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for a ‘family tree’ showing the organisational structure of all staff paid directly or indirectly, their job titles, names of all postholders and the maximum salary for every role, including the chief executive officer and board members.

In response, the regulator FSA provided an organisation chart, alongside some job titles, names and salary maxima, but refused to provide names of most staff and their salaries by applying a personal data exemption to the information. Notably, the authority used this exemption for the chief executive’s maximum salary.

The Information Commissioner reviewed the case and deemed that the personal data exemption was misapplied to one area and should be further considered for others.

As a result, it issued a decision notice requiring the FSA to re-process the request and provide a new response.

The FSA had initially provided some of the requested information and then when the applicant asked for a review, the regulator issued a revised organisation chart containing details to which an exemption had previously been applied.

But it maintained the exemption across other requested information.

While it provided salary maxima for the grades of staff, it claimed a figure for the CEO did not exist because it was ‘subject to annual review’ - although the information was subsequently provided in a Tynwald written reply.

Dissatisfied with the response, the applicant asked the Information Commissioner to review the case.

Following an investigation, Information Commissioner Dr Alexandra Delaney-Bhattacharya found that the FSA failed to record the relevant factors considered in its application of the personal data absolute exemption to the postholders' names.

And she found it had improperly cited the same exemption to non-existent information, demonstrating a failure to identify and categorise information correctly.

The regulator has been given 30 days to either disclose the information or provide a further refusal notice.

Details of the FSA’ s chief executive’s salary was revealed in a Tynwald written reply which was published in December last year in response to a question from Onchan MHK Julie Edge.

Ms Edge asked the Chief Minister to provide individual contracts and costs for each of the top 20 earners in each department, board, office, arm’s length body and agency for every year since 2021 including base salary, overtime, and agency and pay award percentages.

The figure for the top earner in the FSA was £276,999 in 2023-24 and £171,278 in 2024-25 up to the date of the response.

In 2021-22, the top earner in the FSA had earned £137,969 but this figure had shot up to £264,999 the following year.

In its FoI response, the FSA said it has no agency or contract staff. It said it does not employ any staff through employment agencies, employment businesses or through limited liability companies.