[2024] UKUT 134 (AAC)

it did not do justice to Mr Burton’s grounds; in particular, the three-point summary of Mr Burton’s grounds at [4], an abbreviated version (it would appear) of IC’s three-point summary of those grounds in its response (dated 7 October 2022) to Mr Burton’s appeal (at paragraph 23), characterised the first ground, (a), as “a challenge to the ‘cost of compliance’ (although s12 FOIA is not relied on in the Decision Notice)”, whereas it is more fairly characterised as a challenge to the weight placed on the cost of compliance with Mr Burton’s request (calculated using a methodology somewhat based on s12 costs thresholds) in the multifactorial assessment of what is “vexatious” required by the relevant case law (see Dransfield in the Court of Appeal, at [68]) (and this aspect of the ground was brought out in the IC response’s (more complete) summary, when it spoke of the costs of compliance (calculated as above) being a “drop in the ocean” (i.e. relatively insignificant) in the context of the overall expenditure of the public authority in question; and/or

it failed to carry out the inquisitorial (and enabling) role of the FTT, as required by the fact of Mr Burton being a litigant in person, by failing to identify that the reliance placed by the IC’s decision notice on s12 costs thresholds (which IC’s response to the appeal said, at paragraph 27 and again at paragraph 30, were a “useful starting point”, but appear to have been materially relied on, with no further explanation, in reaching the conclusions in the decision notice), was potentially wrong in law,