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Hammersmith & Fulham restaurants

One Response to “Hammersmith & Fulham restaurants”

1. John Lincoln Lee Says:
   November 15th, 2005 at 10:29 pm

   I used to work for a London Borough. A couple of years (pre FoI) ago I was sat in a meeting
   with the head of Environmental Health when a call came through from a Councillor asking for the most
   recent food inspection details of a restaurant he was taking some friends to that evening.

   The call was refered immediately to an Environmental Health officer and the request was
   promptly dealt with. This type of request from Members was apparently a common occurence
   and very rarely refused

   When FoI became law very same authority refused point blank to release food inspection
   reports to the public.

   One Officer argued that although the public now had a right to access this information they
   ‘didn’t need to see it’. Another was concerned that the law was being ‘gung ho’ with ‘his’
   information.

   There’s no good reason for not releasing this type of information to the general public and
   in fact whatever arguments are used these are the mere excuses of petty bureaucrats who for
   motives I never properly understood bitterly resent FoI.

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