Your Ref:
Our Ref: FOI/414742 /
Ms Catherine Byrne
Email: / 6January2016
Dear Ms Byrne
Freedom of Information Request 414742
I am writing in respect of your request for a review of the City Council’s response to your request for information, dated the 20 November, which was handled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. This matter has been assigned to me to investigate and review. The result of my review is contained within this letter.
The information you originally requested was as follows
- All e-mails and other correspondence regarding my request under the Freedom of Information Act for a copy of the full KPMG report, your reference 398714, submitted on 10 August 2015 and acknowledged by you the next day.
We provided the following response –
- Section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a Local Authority to refuse what is deemed to be a vexatious request.While neither focussing on the motive of the request or the number of requests which may have been submitted previously by the relevant individual, it solely examines the worthiness of the request placed against the impact it would have on the Local Authority.
Consequently the City Council feels that the application of Section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is appropriate in these circumstances and would refer you to Information Commissioner vs Devon County Council & Dransfield [2012] UKUT 440 (AAC), (28 January 2013)in which the Upper Tribunal took the view that the ordinary dictionary definition of the word vexatious is only of limited use, because the question of whether a request is vexatious ultimately depends upon the circumstances surrounding that request.
In further exploring the role played by circumstances, the Tribunal placed particular emphasis on the issue of whether the request has adequate or proper justification. They also cited two previous section 14(1) decisions where the lack of proportionality in the requester’s previous dealings with the authority was deemed to be a relevant consideration by the First Tier Tribunal.
After taking these factors into account, the Tribunal concluded that ‘vexatious’ could be defined as the “…manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of a formal procedure.’ (paragraph 27).
Officers within the City Council, while always adhering to their responsibilities and obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 should not be expected to be subject to such levels of public scrutiny of their roles and performance and the City Council considers this type of request to be bordering upon an abuse of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and there is no justification for officers to, in practice, cease their everyday activities and provide correspondence to an individual where there is no legitimate reason to do so. The City Council considers this is a request specifically designed to cause disruption to the relevant officers identified and, consequently, will not be providing the information asked for.
In the present climate of financial cuts to Local Authorities it cannot be perceived to be in the public interest for officers to stop the work they are paid to do in order to collate emails to specific officers purely for the purposes of scrutiny under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. While the Act can, indirectly, ensure officers are held to public account the City Council already has such processes in place and there is no requirement for members of the public to feel they need to assume this role, either on behalf of the City Council or other members of the public.
Additionally, a precedent would be set in terms of any future requests of this type which the City Council may receive. If all officers of the City Council were to be subject to this level of scrutiny in the future there would be a tangible adverse effect upon both their individual and departmental performance.
For purposes of clarity, I will be conducting our internal review based onyour email to the City Council dated the23 November, in which you stated –
1) Although the response states that "the City Council considers this type of request to be bordering upon an abuse of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 " a request for the correspondence on how an email request has been handled is a perfectly acceptable request - indeed, the Information Commissioner's guidance specifically states that such requests must be treated in the same way as any other.
2)The Council's response also states that "The City Council considers this is a request specifically designed to cause disruption to the relevant officers identified", but cannot demonstrate that this is the case. Indeed, the reason why I submitted this request was clear in my communication to you on 16 October regarding my original request (for the full KPMG report), in which I stated that I would be requesting this correspondence. This particular communication was my 7th attempt to obtain either the information identified in an incomplete response that I had received on 8 September, or a refusal to release the information based on a correctly applied exemption. Seeking to understand what was happening and why is and was entirely reasonable. And as for "relevant officers identified" that I allegedly intended to disrupt - I didn't actually identify any officers, relevant or otherwise.
3) Regarding the statement that " "it cannot be perceived to be in the public interest for officers to stop the work they are paid to do in order to collate emails to specific officers purely for the purposes of scrutiny under the Freedom of Information Act 2000", I hope your review will bear in mind that, bluntly, this is precisely what the FOIA Act requires them to do, within reasonable limits in terms of time and resources. So it is not a question of deciding on the public interest, but of complying with the law.
4) The statement that "there is no requirement for members of the public to feel they need to assume this role, either on behalf of the City Council or other members of the public" is a gratuitous non-sequitur that appears to have no purpose beyond that of disparaging me and everyone else who submits requests of this kind. Given that the Information Commissioner's guidance recommends adopting a conciliatory approach, this kind of comment is unhelpful, and I would hope that the review response does not contain further statements of this kind. Finally, could I please ask you to complete the review within the required 20 working days.
- Before going on to clarify our position I would, at this point, reiterate my colleague Kevin Symm’s comments and state that our response will only address the relevance and applicability of the application of Section 14of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in regards to your request. While noting the additional comments and points you raise they are, for the purposes of this review, irrelevant and have not be taken into account when carrying out this review
In terms of the application of Section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 it is the purpose of this review to establish if it was appropriate to refuse to provide the information you requested on these grounds
You asked for all correspondence held by the City Council regarding the drafting of our response to one of your previous requests (REF: 398714). As outlined in our response this process would require all of the officers who had any involvement in the drafting of this response to search their email accounts and identify any relevant emails.
It is the opinion of the City Council that such requests require officers to complete tasks, additional to their routine duties, which are specifically designed to achieve little more than satisfy the curiosity of a requestor. It cannot be in either the City Council’s or the tax-payer’s best interest for officers to stop the work for which they are paid in order to prove to a member of the public that their individual request was completed, in the eyes of the requestor, correctly.
Members of the public do not oversee the conduct of the City Council and the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is not designed in order to enable this to happen.
The City Council had responded to your request and we will not instruct the relevant officers to stop what they're doing in order to provide emails they may have sent when the answers sought by a request have already been provided.
Accordingly, the City Council feels the application of Section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to be appropriate and correct in this instance and the City Council upholds its original response
This concludes my review. As I have now reviewed your original response, you have exhausted the City Council’s appeals process for the purposes of this request.
Accordingly, should you remain dissatisfied, please contact the Information Commissioner’s Office, via the following:
Website is and the postal address and telephone numbers are:-
Information Commissioner’s Office, Wycliffe House, Water Lane
Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Fax number 01625 524 510
Telephone 01625 545745
Email – (they advise that their email is not secure)
ÿÿYours sincerely
Michael Jones
Deputy Head of Democratic Services
Information Team Municipal Buildings Dale Street Liverpool L2 2DH
Telephone 0151 2330418 Fax 0151 225 2392