A FURTHER education college which branded questions about “cash for silence” agreements with departing staff as “harassment” has been ordered to disclose the payments.

The UK’s data watchdog said Oxford & Cherwell Valley College (OCVC) was wrong not to respond to Graham Roberts’s requests about the cash.

He used the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) – which gives a right to information from public bodies – to ask about so-called compromise agreements.

The controversial deals prevent departing staff from bringing a claim and can include a cash payment and gagging clauses to stop them speaking out.

Mr Roberts asked last June for the number of compromise agreements and their cash value.

But the college refused as Mr Roberts had made four similar requests over sacked staff and compromise agreements.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) – which has now upheld Mr Roberts’s appeal – said OCVC believed it was “part of an ongoing campaign against the college”. It classed his last request as “vexatious” and told Mr Roberts: “The college is not obliged to comply.”

The ICO’s Rachael Cragg said OCVC “has argued that these requests have resulted in some of its staff feeling harassed”. But she said: “There is insufficient evidence to establish that this request is part of a wider campaign against the college. The language used within the requests is plain, not excessive, and reasonable in tone. They did not have a “significant burden”.

Mr Roberts, 44, said: “Vexatious or harassment are template replies when people don’t want to release embarrassing information. A lot of the requests could be dealt with quite quickly, there was no malice or anything like that.”

The Didcot resident – who said he made the requests out of curiosity – added: “To say it is harassment is quite a serious thing. It is bizarre, to be quite honest.”

His requests were made through the WhatDoTheyKnow website, which publishes live and completed FOI requests.

College principal Sally Dicketts said: “We believed this complaint to be vexatious in nature given that we had previously dealt with four similar requests for information over a relatively short timescale.”

The college was ordered to respond and has done so saying that no compromise agreements have been signed since September 2011.

OCVC previously responded to his August 2011 request, stating that 27 compromise agreements had been signed since January 2010, but refused to give a value.

The Oxford Mail last year revealed council, NHS and police bosses paid out £4.2m in 268 compromise agreements from 2007 to 2011. They include a £110,000 pay-off to former West Oxfordshire District Council strategic director for the environment Cath James. It led the TaxPayers’ Alliance to say public bodies “shouldn’t be forking out taxpayers’ money to try to protect their reputation”.