Sian James MP office tenancy agreement and upkeep cost

IPSA holds the information that you request.

Please find attached, in Annex A, a copy of the lease for the property requested.

We have withheld information contained in the lease relating to third parties, such as signatures and personal addresses under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act.  Section 40(2) provides that personal data about third parties is exempt information if one of the conditions set out in section 40(3) is satisfied. Under the FOI Act disclosure of this information would breach the fair processing principle (Principle 1) of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA), where it would be unfair to those persons or is confidential. For further information, you may wish to visit the UK Legislation website.

You also requested the ‘cost of upkeep’ for the office.  You will note that the lease specifies that the tenant is liable for all the utilities and any repairs.  Any costs related to the property that have been claimed through IPSA will be available on our website.  You can view the published information via this link to our publication website.

For your reference, the next publication date is 13 March 2014, which will cover those claims processed by IPSA during October to November 2013.  Claims subsequently processed by IPSA will follow in future publications.

The FOIA states that information that is accessible by other means is not subject to release. Therefore, as the information you have requested is already available on our website, it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible to applicant by other means).

Some of the information you have requested is intended for publication at a future date.  Section 22(1) of the FOIA states that information intended for future publication is exempt from release.

We have considered whether the public interest in releasing the information outweighs the application of the exemption. It is our opinion that the public interest is best served by publishing a full list rather than on an ad hoc basis, as in this way a clear and complete set of information is published, avoiding any potential confusion. It is for this reason that the application of the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosure at this stage.