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The FTT considered in Pickles v Information Commissioner [2024] UKFTT 001106 (GRC) the meaning of “vexatious” in s14 FOIA. S14 allows a public authority to elect not to comply with a request for information if the request is vexatious.
The FTT recognised that there is very limited assistance in the statute as to the meaning of the word, and noted the decision of the Court of Appeal in Information Commissioner v Dransfield [2015] EWCA Civ 454.
In Pickles, a Parish Council had decided not to comply with a request for information in the context of a local election which resulted in 5 new councillors joining the Council, all of whom had no previous experience. The request for information was for the official email addresses used by each of the councillors. The Parish Council provided in response the generic “clerk@” email address which could be used to pass an email to each individual councillor. Ms Pickles challenged this and repeated that she wanted individual email addresses for each person. The Parish Council, at that point, refused stating that it was vexatious.
The FTT, recalling the UT and CA decisions in Dransfield, recalled that in determining whether a request is vexatious the Tribunal may look at the burden imposed on the public authority by the request, the motive of the requester, the value or serious purpose of the request, and any harassment of, or distress caused to, the public authority’s staff.
Applying those principles to these facts, the FTT took into account that this request followed a series of previous request with “numerous written questions, emails, subject access requests and letters of complaint”. This had been burdensome, although that could not provide a complete answer to whether the authority ought to comply with the request. The Tribunal also took into account the very limited capacity of the Parish Council.
Ms Pickles emphasised that the request was not onerous: it was for a list of email addresses, and should be easy to answer. The Tribunal recognised this, but was willing to take into account the “aggregated burden of dealing with the volume of correspondences, particularly in light of the clerk providing only 5 hours work per week to the Parish Council and having spent 28.5 hours in dealing with the Appellant’s FOIA requests proper to the refusal which forms the basis of this appeal”.
Moreover, the Tribunal considered that the request had no practical value and was trivial. This told in favour of the request being vexatious.
Indeed, although FOIA requests are normally motive blind, the FTT described s14 as “an exception to this principle. The motive of the requester 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”.
For all of these reasons, the FTT dismissed the appeal against the ICO’s decision that the request had been vexatious.
A monthly data protection bulletin from the barristers at 5 Essex Chambers
The Data Brief is edited by Francesca Whitelaw KC, Aaron Moss and John Goss, barristers at 5 Essex Chambers, with contributions from the whole information law, data protection and AI Team.
