FOI 15-26: A request for information relating to the Assembly's current Transgender Policy

Freedom of Information Act 2000

I am writing to confirm that the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission (Assembly Commission) has processed your request dated 9 March 2026 in line with the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Your request was as follows:

‘...Please provide copies of all information including  internal papers, briefing notes, submissions, correspondence or engagement with external relating to the development and approval of the... Assembly Commission’s current transgender policy or guidance relating to access to toilets or single-sex facilities within Parliament Buildings. I wish to make it clear that this request is limited to development and approval of the guidance and specifically excludes information relating to issues which have been discussed since the Supreme Court judgement in the For Women Scotland case.’

On 18 March 2026, we wrote to you to tell you that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit under section 12 of the FOIA and asked you to refine your request.

‘The request should be limited to the period 1st January 2019 to 16th April 2025. …  I believe that searches using the terms “Continuing Gender Action Plan 2019–23” and “Stonewall” would identify the majority, if not all, of the information relevant to my request…. The request is limited to material relating to the development and approval of the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission’s guidance or policy concerning access to toilets or single sex facilities within Parliament Buildings’.

Specifically, I am seeking: Briefing papers, submissions and decision papers provided to the Assembly Commission; Final or near-final drafts of the guidance or policy; Correspondence (including emails) between senior officials (Director level and above) relating to the development and approval of the guidance and any legal advice, or summaries of legal advice, relied upon in developing the policy. For the avoidance of doubt, I do not require routine administrative correspondence, duplicate copies, or material unrelated to the development and approval of the guidance.

 

Our response

Having carried out the searches proposed, the Assembly Commission holds a range of information in relation to this request.  Much of this information is already published.  As such it is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA (information accessible by other means).  However, we have included hyperlinks to this information as part of providing an overall view of policy development.

Table 1 identifies all relevant papers disclosable under the FOIA in five sections—

• Section 1: E-mails regarding policy development– duplicate attachments omitted.  
• Section 2: Research/Briefing paper
• Section 3: Senior Management Group/Team Papers
• Section 4: Assembly Commission Papers
• Section 5: Copies of the Gender Action Plans (GAP)

Table 1 provides an Index to Appendix A and where available hyperlinks to already-published documents. 

Appendix A contains all documents disclosable under the FOIA which have not been published. The Appendix follows the same structure as Table 1, but does not include a section 5, since all documents in this section are hyperlinked.

 

Exempt information: section 40 FOIA

Certain information has been redacted from Appendix A because it is exempt from disclosure under section 40(2) of the FOIA, which provides that information is exempt information if it constitutes personal data of which the applicant is not the data subject and satisfies one of three conditions.  ‘Personal data’ is defined by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR).

The Assembly Commission is satisfied that the condition set out at section 40(3A)(a) of FOIA is satisfied in respect of the information withheld. The condition is that ‘disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act…would contravene any of the data protection principles…’

The data protection principles are set out at Article 5 of the UK GDPR. The first principle is that processing of personal data must be fair, lawful and transparent.  Processing is ‘lawful’ under the first principle if it satisfies one or more of the conditions at Article 6 of the UK GDPR.

The Assembly Commission does not consider that any condition at Article 6 would allow the lawful disclosure of the names and contact details of relatively junior members of staff or the contact details of the event organisers.

 

Exempt information: section 42 FOIA

Section 42(1) FOIA provides:

‘Information in respect of which a claim to legal professional privilege or, in Scotland, to confidentiality of communications could be maintained in legal proceedings is exempt information.’

Legal advice provided to the Assembly Commission is subject to legal professional privilege (‘LPP’), in this case legal advice privilege.  Communications between the Assembly Commission and its legal advisers (although not incidental references to seeking legal advice) have been withheld or reacted.

LPP applies to confidential communications between the client and lawyer, made for the dominant purpose of seeking or giving legal advice. The Assembly Commission is satisfied that section 42(1) of the FOIA is engaged and applies to the withheld information.

Section 42 is a qualified exemption, and the Assembly Commission has considered the public interest in maintaining the exemption against the public interest in disclosure of the legal advice.

The Assembly Commission notes the public interest in transparency and access to advice which informs on decision making and policy development. Against this, there is a strong inherent public interest in protecting and safeguarding openness in all communications between client and lawyer to ensure access to full and frank legal advice.  The Information Commissioner has noted that ‘a weakening of the confidence that parties have that legal advice will remain confidential undermines the ability of parties to seek advice and conduct litigation appropriately and thus erodes the rule of law and the individual rights it guarantees’ (IC-296549-B8N1).

The Assembly Commission is satisfied that the public interest in disclosing the privileged information is outweighed by the public interest in maintaining the exemption under section 42(1).

 

Further Information

You may request an internal review of this decision by the Assembly Commission. If you wish to request such a review, please write to me at the above address.  If, after that review, you are dissatisfied with the way in which the Assembly Commission has handled your request for information, you may complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire SK9 5AF.

Your request for information and our response may be published in the disclosure log maintained by the Assembly Commission under a publication scheme agreed with the ICO. The request and our response will be anonymised. 

 

Yours sincerely,

INFORMATION STANDARDS