ICO finds exceptional grounds to shield councillor's council tax arrears from disclosure

The Information Commissioner has upheld West Lindsey District Council's refusal to name a councillor who is more than two months behind on their council tax, or to disclose the sum owed. The decision was based on evidence that the ICO said it cannot set out without itself identifying the individual concerned.

The case arose from a three-part request submitted to the council on 6 August 2025, asking how many councillors were at least two months in council tax arrears, the total amount owed, and the councillor's name.

The council confirmed in its substantive response, issued on 1 October 2025, that one councillor met the threshold, but refused to disclose the amount or the name, initially relying on section 38(1) (health and safety), arguing that disclosure could expose the councillor to harassment or physical harm and cause significant distress.

The complainant challenged the refusal, pointing to the Upper Tribunal's 2016 decision in DH v Information Commissioner and Bolton Council [2016] UKUT 139 (AAC), in which a comparable request for councillor arrears information was ordered disclosed.

Rather than rule on the council's section 38 case, the Commissioner exercised his discretion to consider section 40(2) (third party personal data) instead, on the basis that the council's underlying concerns were really about the impact of disclosure on an identifiable individual. Having found section 40(2) engaged, the Commissioner did not need to reach a conclusion on section 38 at all.

The Commissioner first established that both the councillor's name and the total arrears figure constitute personal data. Moreover, he found that even the arrears figure alone - stripped of the councillor's name - would still amount to personal data, since the council's prior confirmation that exactly one councillor met the threshold meant that family members, friends and council colleagues would likely already be able to identify them.

The substantive analysis turned on Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR and the familiar three-stage legitimate interests test. The Commissioner readily found a legitimate interest in transparency and accountability around elected members' compliance with their own tax obligations, and that disclosure was the only means of meeting it.

The balancing test is where the decision becomes significant for practitioners. The Commissioner gave substantial weight to the Upper Tribunal's reasoning in Bolton, which held that council tax default "strikes at the heart of the performance of a councillor's functions" and that the intrusion involved is one a councillor accepts on taking office. But the Tribunal in Bolton also left open the possibility of "exceptional cases" where a councillor's personal circumstances would be sufficiently compelling to displace that public interest.

The council supplied the Commissioner with additional, case-specific evidence about the councillor's personal circumstances which the Commissioner concluded cannot be summarised in the decision notice without indirectly identifying the individual. On the strength of that confidential evidence, the Commissioner found this to be one of the exceptional cases envisaged in Bolton, concluding that Article 6(1)(f) could not provide a lawful basis for disclosure and that the council was entitled to withhold the information under section 40(2) in full.

Derek BedlowThis article first appeared on Local Government Lawyer's new site for public sector information governance professionals, www.info-gov.uk.