appendix d: summaries of selected cases 11. Right of access to guidelines for issuing parking tickets The Ombudsman received a complaint from a motorist who had been given a parking ticket. The motorist complained to the Center for Parkering (the Greater Copenhagen parking department) and also asked for access to the traffic wardens’ guidelines for issuing parking tickets. The motorist received a partial refusal of access and complained to the Ombudsman. The partial refusal of access was based especially on the regard for public monitoring activities and law enforcement (section 13(1)(3) and (4) of the Access to Public Administration Files Act). Among other things, the Center for Parkering claimed that public access to the guidelines in their entirety might cause motorists to exploit their knowledge of the guidelines by following the guidelines and not the parking regulations laid down in the Road Traffic Act, thereby reducing general respect for the Road Traffic Act regulations. The Ombudsman found that the guidelines did not contain information which might cause exemption from access on the grounds put forward by the Center for Parkering. Consequently, the Ombudsman recommended that the Center for Parkering reopen the case concerning access to the guidelines. (Case No. 2009-4045-601) 12. Case processing time in environmental approval case A farmer complained that a local authority had not yet made a decision regarding environmental approval for a capacity expansion of a biogas plant. The application for environmental approval was submitted in 2004, and the local authority took over the case on 1 January 2007. The local authority decided that the case was not EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) obligatory but this decision was appealed to the Nature Protection Board of Appeal. The local authority did not start the actual processing of the environmental approval case until it had concluded the EIA case, and a decision in the environmental approval case was left in abeyance until a final decision had been made on whether the expansion was EIA obligatory. The Ombudsman found it regrettable that the local authority had not started the actual case processing until 2008. In addition, it was regrettable that the local authority postponed the processing of the case until it had made a decision on whether the expansion was EIA obligatory. If the cases had been processed 101