The Contradiction Engine · For lawyers · Free

Transparency or privacy?

The situation

You advise the Eastmark County Council. A journalist has asked to see the council’s inspection reports on a care home where three residents died last year. The reports are about the home’s safety standards, but they also name the staff on duty and give the medical conditions of residents, some of whom are still living there.

The council’s records officer has asked you whether the reports can be released.

The rules

Rule A (Access to Records Act 2012, s.3). Any person may require a public authority to give access to a document it holds.
Rule B (s.9). An authority may withhold information that identifies a living person if giving it would be an unwarranted intrusion into that person’s privacy. In deciding this, the authority must weigh the intrusion against the public interest in disclosure.
Rule C (s.10). Before refusing access to a document, an authority must consider whether access can be given to a copy from which the identifying information has been removed.

Your task

Decide what the council should do with the request.

Everything you need is on this page: no outside law and no tools. All places, statutes and people are fictional (the Republic of Eastmark). More than one answer may be defensible: what matters is that your reasoning follows the rules shown.

Step 1 · What kind of conflict is this?

The conflict disappears once the rules are read together properly.A real conflict that the law tells the decision-maker to resolve by weighing.A real conflict that the law does not resolve: reasonable lawyers could differ.No real conflict: the two rules govern different things.

Professional skills training with fictional material. It is not legal advice and is not accredited by any court, regulator or professional body.