[2024] UKUT 320 (AAC)

We consider that that is to overstate consideration of the applicant’s convenience. The exceptions from disclosure afforded by Regulation 6(1)(a) and (b) are intended, in our view, to balance against the rights of the applicant the burden on a public authority. On the facts of this case, we consider that the information is easily accessible to the Appellant. We accept that he must make a journey, at cost, to the Searchroom but we do not consider his journey times or costs to be material for the purposes of EIR. Some kind of travel is inevitable for any applicant where the information, albeit in electronic form, is held in a specific, physical location. Travel distances and travel costs will necessarily vary for individuals, and consequently achieving access, in that sense, will inevitably take longer or be more expensive or arduous for some than for others.

As it is, we do not consider that accessibility to information is properly determined by considerations of travel for the purposes of EIR. We consider that accessibility connotes, more immediately, the ability to “get at” (our own, inelegant phrase) the information in its entirety. In our view, access to the information is afforded directly to the Appellant at the point of the screen. He has not suggested that any of the information is not readily accessible by him at the point of the screen. The practical arrangements around that access which are offered by the Council afford every reasonable accommodation.

The Appellant’s construction of “accessible” entails not just the ability to access the information, but the ability to capture and retain the information in a particular way for a specific use by him outside the Searchroom, achieved by receipt of electronic copies of the maps. We consider that that is to strain the meaning of the words “easily accessible to the applicant” in the context of Regulation 6(1)(b), and we find no support for that in the Directive or the Convention. In this case, the Appellant has two challenges: (1) the nature of the information and the original medium in which it was collected (large maps) and from which it has been transposed to digital format, and (2) the use which he wishes to make of the information. The former precedes, and the latter succeeds, the point of access itself. We do not construe a requirement that the information be “easily accessible” as having to accommodate either of those challenges.

The Appellant referred us to Office of Communications v Information Commissioner EA/2006/0078, in which the First-tier Tribunal found [69] that whether the information sought by the applicant in a particular form or format was easily accessible to the applicant should be assessed by reference to the particular format which had been requested. In that case, the applicant sought information relating to the location, ownership and technical attributes of mobile phone cellular base stations in the United Kingdom contained in localised maps published on a website operated by Ofcom. He requested for every mobile phone base listed on the website, various categories of information, including a grid reference number. He noted that there was no facility to download the information on all the base stations. He asked for the information to be supplied as either a text file, csv file, Access database, or Excel spreadsheet. The Tribunal found that while access to the website was easy and that it would have been possible, once on the website, to extract therelevant information, base station by base station, and to assemble it into a text listing of some form containing the whole of the network, the second of those steps would have been time consuming, could not be described as an easy process, and it would not have yielded the grid number, which was not, in any event, disclosed on the site. On that basis the Tribunal did not consider that that part of the information could properly be described as easily accessible.

The Tribunal is not bound by the previous decisions of the First-tier Tribunal. It seems to us in this case that determining whether the information requested is to be regarded as easily accessible by reference to the particular format requested, would be the wrong approach. By that means, there is a risk that assessment of accessibility is viewed only, or overly, through the lens of the applicant’s convenience and purpose. Possible difficulties in recording and using information, once accessed, do not make information any less accessible. Moreover, there is no suggestion before us that any information in the original tithe maps has not been included in the digitised versions so that it is not accessible at all through that medium.