Never seen so many Cabinet items to be discussed in secret! At this rate the Cabinet will be soon meeting in a secret bunker!
Click to access 020714_cabinet_combined_agenda_-_public_version.pdf
8 items in public, 7 items in secret. Is this a record?
Would the Information Commissioner agree?
East Devon Watch 
The issue here is IMO that the reports in question deal with both confidential and non-confidential matters, and because these are mixed, they can discuss the whole thing in secret.
I am sure for example, that the pros and cons for Shared IT Services could be discussed in public providing that the commercially sensitive bits were discussed in private. Indeed there is a lot of the business case which could be discussed in public – it is only the bids from potential suppliers that are commercially sensitive – the benefits and other costs could be discussed publicly. I am also somewhat puzzled as to what finance or business affairs of a particular person would be doing in a report about IT Shared Services – though I suppose if there were going to be redundancies as a result of such a move, that would probably qualify if names were being mentioned – however I don’t see why these could not be omitted from the report in order to allow the majority of it to be discussed in public.
Similarly I am sure that most of the Seaton Jurassic report could be discussed in public if the confidential bits were redacted.
I am unclear why items which are “To note the action points” from three other meetings (which perhaps should themselves have been held in public and / or their minutes have been published) should be considered confidential – and again why couldn’t the personal and commercial bits be redacted so that the majority could have been discussed in public.
Finally I fail to see how two items as innocuous as Parking need to contain either finance or business affairs of a particular person (as relevant under the act) or commercially confidential bids.
Overall I am definitely left with the impression (rightly or wrongly) that EDDC leadership have now decided that these two grounds for exclusion can be widely used (or misused) to provide excuses to discuss matters in secret.
I definitely think that this needs to be referred to the ICO for review.
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