CP v The Information Commissioner

A request is vexatious under section 14(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 only where a high threshold is met after an objective, broad and balanced assessment of all relevant circumstances. The request’s possible public value is important, but it is not decisive. It may be outweighed where persistent, repetitive requests form an obsessive and disproportionate pursuit of a personal grievance.

Where the parties’ prior dealings are relied on, the tribunal requires sufficiently detailed and contextual evidence. It need not have an exhaustive chronology. A material error of law will not arise where the evidence of the relevant recent dealings clearly supports the finding.

The appellant, a former volunteer member of a Health Research Authority committee, made a series of complaints and information requests after he was not reappointed. On 27 September 2013 he made an eight-part request concerning the Authority’s consideration of complaints-related matters.

The Authority refused the request as vexatious under section 14(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The Information Commissioner upheld that refusal. The First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber), by a decision dated 10 November 2014, dismissed the appellant’s appeal.

The appeal to the Upper Tribunal concerned whether the First-tier Tribunal had undertaken the rounded assessment required by Dransfield v The Information Commissioner and Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454, and whether its evidential basis concerning the parties’ previous dealings was sufficiently clear.

1. Appeal dismissed. The First-tier Tribunal’s decision involved no material error of law.

2. Section 14(1) requires an objective and rounded assessment of whether the request, rather than the requester, is vexatious. The assessment has a high threshold. Relevant matters include burden, motive, value or serious purpose, and harassment or distress, without converting those matters into a formulaic checklist. The authority of Information Commissioner v Devon CC and Dransfield [2012] UKUT 440 (AAC) and the Court of Appeal decision in Dransfield v The Information Commissioner and Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454 supported that approach.

3. Where prior dealings are relied upon, there must be an appropriately detailed evidential foundation which explains and contextualises them. It need not be compendious or exhaustive. The Commissioner’s material and the First-tier Tribunal’s analysis of requests before summer 2013 were deficient. Those deficiencies were not material because the detailed evidence of four inter-related requests during July to September 2013, against the background of the unresolved grievance, sufficiently supported the finding of a campaign rather than a request with serious purpose.

4. Although the First-tier Tribunal did not repeat its finding of an underlying public interest when setting out its core reasoning, its reasons read as a whole showed that it had weighed that factor. Public interest was not a trump card. The Tribunal was entitled to find that any original fact-seeking purpose had become an oppressive pursuit of grievance.

5. Applying judicial restraint to the First-tier Tribunal’s reasons, the Upper Tribunal held that the omission of fuller reasoning did not establish a misdirection. The request was properly found vexatious and the appeal was dismissed.

• Upper Tribunal (Administrative Appeals Chamber): dismissed the appeal and held that the First-tier Tribunal had made no material error of law.
• First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber): on 10 November 2014, dismissed the appeal against the Information Commissioner’s decision and held that the request was vexatious under section 14(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.