A government department has been told to provide a new response to a Freedom of Information request.

The FoI request was submitted to the Department for Enterprise in October 2023, asking for information relating to Visit Isle of Man’s structure, salary, board and appointment processes.

While the department released most of the requested information, it omitted civil service pay scales for each position and there were several broken hyperlinks within the response.

The applicant felt their request hadn't been fully answered and asked for an internal review.

In response, the department acknowledged some shortcomings. It revised some of the links and provided an additional piece of information.

But the applicant remained unhappy with what they said was unclear information on pay scales for some positions.

They asked the Information Commissioner to investigate.

Their complaint has been reviewed and partially upheld.

The Commissioner found that the department did not provide a response to all parts of the request.

As a result, the department is required to reprocess part of the request.

In a decision notice, the Information Commissioner has require the DfE within 30 days to either disclose the information requested or provide the applicant with a further refusal notice.

It concludes: ‘The Information Commissioner’s decision is to partially uphold the applicant’s complaint as the authority did not answer each part of the request.’

The DfE must reissue a response to the part of the initial request, which asked for an organisation chart/’family tree’ showing the distribution of staffing within Visit IoM, together with the individual job titles of all members of staff and the individual civil service pay scales attaching to their posts.

The Information Commission said the DfE had offered no formal grounds for withholding the requested pay band information.