FT/EA/2024/0471 - [2025] UKFTT 01281 (GRC)

In accordance with section 58 of FOIA, our role is to consider whether the Commissioner’s Decision Notice was in accordance with the law. As set out in section 58(2), we may review any finding of fact on which the Decision Notice was based. This means that we can review all of the evidence provided to us and make our own decision.

We have considered the questions set out in Dransfield.

The burden imposed on the public authority by the request. The Request itself is focussed and not unduly burdensome to answer. However, a single request can be burdensome in light of the previous course of dealings between the parties, particularly the number and nature of previous FOIA requests from the same individual. It is notable in this case that the Appellant says the Request is the only request that he has submitted to the School under FOIA.

The motive of the requester. The Appellant does not have an impermissible motive behind the Request, and this is not suggested by the Commissioner. The Appellant says that his purpose is not to directly reference the School, but to “use the information to focus minds of all secondary schools on the significant cost of getting issues such as this wrong”. The School suggested in its response to the Commissioner that this was a personal vendetta. However, having considered the reasons given for requesting the information (including the additional information set out in the Confidential Annex), we do not find that the Request was motivated by a personal vendetta against the School or any particular individual.

The value or serious purpose. In their response to the Commissioner, the School suggests that the Request lacks any serious purpose or value because the relevant issue has been adjudicated upon twice. The Commissioner’s decision finds that there is some value to the Request - understanding what public funds were used on legal fees by the School in relation to the First-Tier Tribunal would be of interest in understanding how money is spent. The Appellant’s position is that there is significant public interest in how public authority school funds are used to defend disability discrimination cases. We agree that this is an issue of public interest, and so the Request does have some value or serious purpose.

Any harassment of, or distress caused to, the public authority’s staff. The Commissioner’s decision notes that issues have been ongoing since January 2023 and have taken a toll on staff at the School, particularly the headteacher while awaiting the outcome of a Teaching Regulation Agency referral. We note that this was accepted for investigation, but closed without further action. We appreciate that this would have been stressful for the headteacher, and that the wider chain of events (as set out in more detail in the Confidential Annex) would have been stressful for staff at the School. However, this isolated FOIA request is not targeted at any particular individual, and we do not find that it constitutes harassment.

Overall, it is relevant that the Commissioner’s decision was based on information from the School that was not supported by evidence or checked with the Claimant. There is no obligation on the Commissioner to check information with a complainant before making his decision (and the procedure followed by the Commissioner is outside the Tribunal’s remit). However, in this case we had detailed appeal grounds from the Appellant which challenged the version of events from the School and provided supporting evidence. The Commissioner’s response did not address these grounds of appeal in any detail. We have therefore accepted the Appellant’s version of events where this conflicts with the information in the Commissioner’s decision.

We have considered the above matters carefully. Having done so, we do not find that the Request meets the high standard of vexatiousness in all the circumstances. This single request is not a “manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of FOIA”. We are mindful of the comments by Arden J in Dransfield that the starting point is whether there 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”. The Commissioner says he does not consider that the answer to the Request will provide any satisfactory end point for the Claimant. It is certainly possible that future requests on the same or similar topics may reach the point where those requests become vexatious. However, this single FOIA request had not reached that point, and we have found that it does have some value and serious purpose. We also note that the Appellant’s appeal grounds say, “we can categorically state we intend to make no further complaints or referrals to regulatory bodies regarding this issue”.

We therefore find that the School was not entitled to refuse to respond to the Request because it is vexatious. We uphold the appeal.

The Appellant’s desired outcome is for the Commissioner’s decision to be set aside and the information provided as originally requested. The Commissioner says that if the appeal succeeds the Tribunal should order steps obliging the School to issue a fresh response that does not rely on section 14(1) FOIA. We agree with the Commissioner that this is the correct approach. Where a public authority has initially refused a request because it is vexatious, they should still be permitted to rely on any exemptions that might apply to some or all of the requested information. It would not be appropriate for the Tribunal to simply order that the information is disclosed. We set this out in the Substituted Decision Notice above.

The Appeal also asks for “false and misleading information” in the Commissioner’s decision to be removed from the public domain, and for the Commissioner to consider their process, procedural fairness and how incorrect information was allowed to appear in the public domain. These are not matters that the Tribunal can deal with and so we have not addressed this any further in our decision.