FT/EA/2025/0038 - [2025] UKFTT 01205 (GRC)

The Appellant lodged his appeal on 27 December 2024.

The Grounds of Appeal were, in essence, that:

On 26 June 2025, the Appellant sent an email to the Tribunal and the Commissioner, stating that further information had come to light about one of the grants that was the subject of his request. In that email, he again questioned how the BBCF had been administered and maintained that the Council had provided misleading statements to the Commissioner.

The Commissioner lodged his response on 02 July 2025, in which he maintained that the Decision Notice was correct.

The Commissioner placed reliance on the Upper Tribunal’s analysis as to what may constitute a vexatious request in Information Commissioner v Cevon County Council & Dransfield [2012] UKUT 440 (AAC)), which was not challenged on appeal to the Court of Appeal in Dransfield v Information Commissioner & Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454.

The Commissioner stated that:

“[He] took into account the Appellant’s concerns regarding the administration of the Bounce Back Challenge Fund and accepted that, “the complainant’s early requests may have had a purpose and value to them” [DN34]. However the other factors including the burden of dealing with the prior requests due to the follow up correspondence this generated, the tone of correspondence and the fact that the Appellant’s concerns do not appear to have been substantiated by the LGO, taking a holistic view in accordance with Dransfield the Commissioner submits he was correct to deem the request dated 22 April 2024 to be vexatious under section 14(1) FOIA”.

The Commissioner stated that the Council had previously issued the Appellant with a refusal notice under FOIA on 10 March 2023 in respect of a vexatious request relating to the Bounce Back Challenge Fund and it would have been unreasonable for it to issue another one – particularly given that the purpose of section 14 of FOIA was to protect the resources of the public authority from being squandered on a disproportionate use of FOIA.

The Commissioner noted that the Appellant sought to rely on the Council’s disclosure in respect of a separate FOIA request relating to the BBCF made in November 2024 by a third party as evidence in support of his appeal. The Commissioner noted that this suggested that the Council’s refusal in April 2024 was not a ‘blanket’ refusal for information relating to the BBCF as alleged by the Appellant.

The Appellant sent three emails to the Commissioner in reply to the Commissioner’s response.

In the first email, dated 03 July 2025, the Appellant stated that he did not accept the Council’s assertion that the monitoring report was published shortly after the refusal notice dated 10 March 2023. He stated that the document which had been published only contained a summary of sixteen of the awarded grants and did not amount to a monitoring report.

In this second email, dated 07 July 2025, the Appellant stated that the Commissioner’s conclusion that the complaint to the LGO had not been substantiated by the LGO was misleading. He stated that his complaint to the LGO had been about his own grant application and not the BBCF, and that the LGO had not commented about the administration of the BBCF scheme as a whole.

In this third email, dated 21 July 2025, the Appellant again questioned the Commissioner’s comment that the Council had confirmed that the monitoring report had been published shortly after the refusal notice dated 10 March 2023, stating that “the statement the Commissioner made, based on what the Council said is not true”.

The Appellant provided further comments in relation to the appeal on 18 August 2025. In summary, he stated the following:

The Appellant considered the four broad themes developed by the Upper Tribunal in Dransfield, stating as follows:

The Appellant provided further information (undated) in direct response to the Decision Notice, highlighting the statements that he asserted were misleading and providing an explanation as to why they were misleading. He stated that the Council were connecting a number of unrelated FOI requests to portray a pattern of vexatious requests. He linked the requests back to his own application for a grant in 2021 and questioned some of the projects that had received a grant. He stated that the Council were not following their own guidance in relation to the granting of the funds. He denied that he was seeking to reopen issues which had already been addressed, and denied that he had taken a scatter gun approach to the sending of emails. He reiterated his complaint about the refusal, post the request that is the subject of this appeal, to allow him to sell coffee on an ad hoc basis in the park. He also reiterated that councillors and officials had made multiple misleading statements which had been proven by this previous FOI requests.

The Appellant provided multiple documents in support of his further statement dating back to 2021, and including in relation to his application for permission to serve coffee at the parkrun from April 2023 onwards.

The relevant provisions of FOIA are as follows:

Section 17 provides, so far as relevant:

The FOIA does not provide any assistance as to what is meant by ‘vexatious’. The Upper Tribunal gave guidance in Information Commissioner v Devon County Council and Dransfield [2012] UKUT 440 (AAC), as upheld and clarified by the Court of Appeal in Dransfield v Information Commissioner and Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454.

As noted by Arden LJ in her judgment in the Court of Appeal in Dransfield, the hurdle of showing a request is vexatious is a high one: “…the starting point is that vexatiousness primarily involves making a request which has no reasonable foundation, that is, no reasonable foundation for thinking that the information sought would be of value to the requester, or to the public or any section of the public. Parliament has chosen a strong word which therefore means that the hurdle of satisfying it is a high one, and that is consistent with the constitutional nature of the right. The decision maker should consider all the relevant circumstances in order to reach a balanced conclusion as to whether a request is vexatious” (para 68).  

Judge Wikeley’s decision in the Upper Tribunal sets out more detailed guidance that was not challenged in the Court of Appeal. The ultimate question is, “is the request vexatious in the sense of being a manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of FOIA?” (para 43). In the context of reviewing the Commissioner’s Guidance, Judge Wikeley highlighted “the importance of adopting a holistic and broad approach to the determination of whether a request is vexatious or not, emphasising the attributes of manifest unreasonableness, irresponsibility and, especially where there is a previous course of dealings, the lack of proportionality that typically characterise vexatious requests” (para 45). Arden LJ in the Court of Appeal also emphasised that a “rounded approach” is required (para 69).

The Upper Tribunal set out four non-exhaustive broad issues which can be helpful in assessing whether a request is vexatious:  

Overall, the purpose of section 14 is to “protect the resources (in the broadest sense of that word) of the public authority from being squandered on disproportionate use of FOIA” (Upper Tribunal, para 10).

The guidance by the Information Commissioner on section 17(6) and refusal notices reads as follows:

“Section 17(6) of the Act states that there is no need to issue a refusal notice if:

•

the authority has already given the same person a refusal notice for a previous vexatious or repeated request; and

•

it would be unreasonable to issue another one.

We will usually only accept that it is unreasonable to issue a further refusal notice if you have already warned the complainant that they will not receive any response to further requests on the same or similar topics”.

The Tribunal’s remit is governed by section 58 FOIA. This requires the Tribunal to consider whether the decision made by the Commissioner is in accordance with the law or, where the Commissioner’s decision involved an exercise of his discretion, whether he ought to have exercised it differently. The Tribunal may receive evidence that was not before the Commissioner and may make different findings of fact from the Commissioner.

The issues for the tribunal to determine are whether the Information Commissioner’s Decision Notice was in accordance with the law – namely whether the Information Commissioner was correct determining that the request was vexatious under section 14(1) of FOIA and in holding that the Council was entitled to rely on section 17(6) of FOIA to decline to issue a further refusal notice.

We read and took account of an open bundle containing 495 pages including indexes.

We also heard submissions by the Appellant which we have taken into account.

When considering the issues in this case, we must firstly consider whether the request that is the subject of this appeal was vexatious. If not, then the Council cannot rely on section 17(6) of FOIA to refuse to issue a refusal notice. Even where a previous request has been determined to be vexatious and has led to a warning that a further refusal notice will not be issued, each request must be considered on its own merits to decide whether it is vexatious under section 14 of FOIA. However, if a new request does fall within section 14 of FOIA, then it can be unreasonable to expect a public authority to keep issuing further refusal notices.

The Tribunal considered the non-exhaustive list of issues as set out by the Upper Tribunal in Dransfield and the overall circumstances of the case, including the history of the relationship between the Appellant and the Council.

The burden imposed on the public authority by the request.This is a key factor relied upon by the Council. Whilst the mere fact that a responding to a request may be burdensome, that in itself does not absolve the Council from their legal obligations under FOIA. However, each request must be considered in context, and the Tribunal has therefore taken the previous dealings between the Appellant and the Council into account when assessing whether the request is vexatious.

The Tribunal notes that, between July 2021 and January 2023, the Council had received seven requests for information regarding the BBCF from the Appellant. The majority of those requests generated voluminous follow-up correspondence including, by way of example, over 100 emails being received from the Appellant in relation to a request pertaining to the scoring of his own grant application.

We also note that much of the Appellant’s correspondence takes the form of a scatter-gun approach, with multiple emails on the same or similar topic being sent to multiple individuals.

We accept the contention raised by the Council that, even if the request were to be responded to, it would be likely to generate further questions and correspondence. In support of this contention, we note that the Appellant continued to send emails requesting the monitoring report as part of FOI request #8074, notwithstanding that he had been told that it would soon be published and therefore publicly available.

In addition, we note that the Appellant’s complaints about the management of the scheme have been fully considered by the Council and by others, including the Local Government Ombudsman, and that they have not been substantiated. We therefore agree with the notion that the Appellant is attempting to re-open matters that have previously been considered, with a correlating negative impact on the Council’s resources.

We note that much of the correspondence from the Appellant is lengthy, and we therefore take into account the aggregated burden on the Council of dealing with both the number and length of the various requests and communications from the Appellant.

The motive of the requestor. It is the case generally that the application of FOIA and any request made under it is not dependant on the motive behind the request. However, section 14 is an exception to this principle. The motive of the requestor can be an important factor as to whether a request is vexatious in the wider context of the dealings between an individual and a public authority. In this case, the Appellant states that his motive for making the request relates to concerns that he has about the management of the BBCF and the allocation of grants to certain businesses.

The Tribunal is satisfied that the history and content of the communications between the Appellant and the Council demonstrate that, in reality, the FOIA requests are being used as part of a campaign to question and undermine the Council. We note that the Appellant’s correspondence frequently contains assertions that the BBCF process was unfairly administered, and that Council officers have made multiple misleading statements. We also note that his communications have progressed from concerns about the outcome of his own funding grant, to allegations of mismanagement of the BBCF scheme, to matters concerning the administration of companies who were awarded grants.

We are satisfied that the conduct of the Appellant appears to be fuelled, at least in part, by his disquiet of the decision of the Council to refuse to issue him a grant in 2021 and further decisions that have impacted on his ability to trade. In submissions, the Appellant outlined the more recent history of his communications with the Council regarding his mobile coffee business and his desire to trade during local parkruns. Whilst these communications occurred after the request that is the subject of this appeal, they are instructive in that they reinforce our conclusion that the Appellant’s conduct is motivated, at least in part, by a sense of animosity towards the Council because of the way in which he perceives that they have made repeated decisions that are adverse to his business interests.

Value or serious purpose of the request.The Tribunal recognises the clear public interest in accountability and transparency of Council decisions, particularly where the spending of public funds are involved. We also recognise the importance of individuals who are impacted by decisions of a Council being able to understand the basis for those decisions and, where necessary, being able to question and challenge them.

We are cognisant of the fact that the Appellant does not accept that a monitoring report into the BBCF has ever been published. However, we note that a detailed report on “The Bounce Back Challenge Fund” was published following the closure of the scheme, and that Bournemouth University Business School also produced an independent report into the outcomes of the BBCF.

We do accept that the initial requests by the Appellant may have had a value. However, we take the view that the frequency and volume of subsequent requests demonstrates that latter requests do not have a significant value or purpose to them.

Any harassment of, or distress caused to, the public authority’s staff.We recognise that the Appellant has not used the extreme type of language referred to in Dransfield and nor can his behaviour be categorised as ‘extremely offensive’. Whilst he does make repeated assertions about mismanagement of the scheme by the Council and that the Council (and councillors) have made misleading statements (which potentially amount to corruption), the most significant overtly derogatory comments that we have seen refer to one senior manager and one councillor as being “clueless charlatans who do not have any idea what they are doing”.

However, we do find that the repeated attempts to reopen issues that have been resolved and the continued volume and intensity of the communications over a significant period from 2021 onwards would have had a cumulative impact on councillors and council members who were tasked with responding to the communications.

Having considered all of the circumstances of this case and taking a holistic and rounded approach, we are satisfied that the request was a disproportionate use of the FOIA regime. On the balance of probabilities, we have concluded that the Appellant is making FOIA requests as part of a wider campaign to question and undermine the activities of the Council, and that such a pattern of behaviour is likely to continue. We are satisfied that the motivation of the Appellant, at least in part, stems back to the refusal of his grant application in 2021. It is not in the public interest for the limited resources of the Council to be disproportionally spent on replying to the Appellant’s requests, undermining their ability to carry out their core functions for the benefit of the wider community. In coming to this conclusion, we have taken into account the underlying purpose of section 14 of FOIA to protect the resources of the public authority from being squandered on the disproportionate or improper use of FOIA.

We therefore find that the Council was entitled to rely on section 14 of FOIA to refuse to respond to the request that is the subject of this appeal.

As outlined above, section 17(6) of FOIA allows a public authority to provide no response to further vexatious requests. We have found that this request could be refused on the ground of vexatiousness under section 14 of FOIA. The issue then is whether it was unreasonable to expect the Council to serve a further refusal notice. We have had particular regard to the fact that the Appellant had not raised any further FOIA request relating expressly to the BBCF between January 2023 and April 2024. However, we do take into account that, in that intervening period, the Appellant did raise further queries with the Council on a related topic, namely the way in which they dealt with business applications from him. We note that the Council had clearly informed the Appellant that they would not be responding to further requests due to the burden of doing so. In all of the circumstances, we find that it was unreasonable to expect the Council to serve a further refusal notice.

We note that this does not mean that the Council can automatically refuse to reply to any future FOIA requests that are made by the Appellant. The Council will still need to consider each request on its merits to decide whether it falls under section 14 of FOIA and, if so, whether it is unreasonable to expect them to provide a refusal notice for that particular request.

The Tribunal dismisses the appeal for the reasons given above.