Liam Harron v The Information Commissioner & Anor

In this Decision the following terms have the following meanings:

All references to a section of an Act are to FOIA.

This is an appeal against the decision of the Commissioner as set out in the Decision Notice.

The Tribunal received and considered a bundle of documents, a skeleton argument prepared by Mr Knibbe on behalf of the Council dated 17 March 2026 and an authorities bundle submitted with that skeleton. The Appellant and the Council attended an oral hearing by Cloud Video Platform.

On the day of the hearing, the Appellant sent to the Tribunal an email attaching: a short statement from the witness T dated 23 March 2026 in response to the Council’s skeleton argument; further copies of two documents which had been included in the open bundle for the appeal; and the decision of the Upper Tribunal in Liam Harron v Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council [2026] UKUT 48 (AAC), given on 16 March 2026. To the extent that these had not previously been before the Tribunal in this appeal I consider that it is in the interests of fairness and justice that the Tribunal takes these documents into account, and it has done so.

The Commissioner does not routinely attend appeal hearings. By rule 36 of the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (General Regulatory Chamber) Rules 2009, a hearing can proceed in the absence of a party if the Tribunal is satisfied that the party had notice of the hearing and that it is in the interests of justice to proceed. The Tribunal is satisfied that these requirements were met in this case, and that this was a fair and just way to decide the Appeal.

The Appellant and the Council have a long history of corresponding regarding the Council's handling of matters relating to child sexual exploitation. This has included a substantial number of FOIA requests by the Appellant, some of which have resulted in complaints to the Commissioner and appeals to the First-tier Tribunal and the Upper Tribunal. The Council’s handling of previous requests has in some cases been criticised by the Tribunal.

Within this correspondence, there is a particular history regarding Voices. The early background to this correspondence was considered by the First-tier Tribunal in Liam Harron v Information Commissioner (FT/EA/2018/0086), and is set out in that decision at [13]-[27]. At its heart is the apparent decision by the Council not to distribute some 1500 copies of Voices, having previously indicated that it would do so.

The Council issued a single refusal notice to the Appellant on 16 February 2017, having received, on its evidence, six FOIA requests from the Appellant in the preceding 17 months. That single refusal notice has since been withdrawn and replaced with further single refusal notices. The most recent of these is the SRN, which is dated 23 September 2021.

On 18 January 2024, the Appellant sent the Letters. Each of the Letters contained 40 separate questions. The questions covered a range of matters relating to the Council’s handling of events relating to child sexual exploitation in its area. Some, but not all, of the questions related expressly to Voices.

The Council did not respond to the Letters.

On 5 November 2024 the Commissioner approached the Council about the lack of response to the Letters. It is unclear how the Commissioner came to be aware of this correspondence, but that is not material to this appeal.

The Commissioner carried out an investigation and issued the Decision Notice on 29 May 2025. The Commissioner decided that:

The Appellant appealed to the Tribunal.

The relevant provisions of FOIA for the purposes of this appeal are as follows:

General right of access to information held by public authorities.

Any person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled—

Refusal of request

A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

Subsection (5) does not apply where—

the public authority is relying on a claim that section 14 applies,

Interpretation

“Vexatious” is not defined in FOIA. The leading decision on the application of the test for vexatiousness is that of the Upper Tribunal in Information Commissioner vDransfield and Devon County Council [2012] UKUT 440 (AAC), as considered by the Court of Appeal (Dransfield v Information Commissioner and Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454).

Whether a request is vexatious is to be determined on the facts of the relevant case.

In the decision of the Upper Tribunal, Judge Wikeley said at [28] that, when applying the test:

Giving the judgment of the Court of Appeal, Arden LJ said at [68] that:

The Appellant’s grounds of appeal raise three purported errors of law in the Commissioner’s decision:

In submissions at the hearing, the Appellant focused not on these arguments but on his dealings with the Council, the Council’s approach to its dealings with him and his evidence about related events.

He said that he did not want to focus on Voices because in his view this should not be the subject of the hearing. He said that the Letters were not intended as FOIA requests, but were intended to open a conversation with the individuals to whom they were addressed; he also said they were, at the time, intended to “build a chronology” for his separate Tribunal case numbered 2023/0169.

In submissions, the Appellant said that he wished only to focus on 10 specific questions, which were those numbered 2, 9, 11, 19, 21, 26, 28, 34, 35 and 38 in Letter 1.

The Council’s primary case is that the Letters did not constitute FOIA requests at all.

In the alternative, the Council submits that the Letters, if they were FOIA requests, can be refused in their entirety as being vexatious.

In evidence which was not challenged by the Appellant the Council says that the Appellant has made more than 50 FOIA requests to it since September 2015. The Tribunal has not seen comprehensive details of all of these requests, but has seen a summary provided by the Council. This summary indicates that a number of the Appellant’s requests related directly to Voices, or to previous requests regarding Voices, while other requests did not.

Mr Knibbe made specific submissions on each of the 10 questions which the Appellant wanted to pursue at the hearing. Mr Knibbe said that the questions formed part of a campaign by the Appellant which entirely stemmed from the Council's decision not to distribute Voices. He said that the number of the questions indicated that the Appellant was “looking for dirt” or seeking to “establish blameworthiness” on the part of the Council or its members or officers.

Mr Knibbe made specific reference to the facts of the appeal in Dransfield, and submitted that there were significant parallels between those facts and the facts of this case. Further, he submitted that the volume of the Appellant’s requests was of a greater order of magnitude from that in Dransfield. The Appellant submitted that, over the relevant period of time, he had made less than one request every two months on average.

Turning to the themes identified by the Upper Tribunal in Dransfield, Mr Knibbe submitted that:

The Council submits that, if the Letters were FOIA requests, it was entitled to decline to respond having issued the SRN. The SRN states that:

The Commissioner resists the appeal in part.

He says that he now considers that 14 specific questions in the Letters do not constitute FOIA requests, as they are not requests for recorded information.

In a somewhat ambiguous submission regarding reliance on the SRN, the Commissioner says that 11 of the questions which he agrees are FOIA requests “may not” relate to Voices, and that “to the extent that it is determined that some of the requests do not fall within the scope of [the SRN]”, the Decision Notice was incorrect in finding that the Council could rely on s17(6).

In relation to these 11 questions the Commissioner reserves his position on whether they are vexatious and says that he will review this it in light of the Council’s response to the appeal. The Tribunal has not seen any further submissions from the Commissioner on this point.

In relation to the remaining questions, the Commissioner resists the appeal and submits that the Decision Notice was correct as to vexatiousness and reliance on s17(6).

In two previous appeals the Tribunal has found that refusals by the Council of FOIA requests by the Appellant on the basis of vexatiousness were flawed. Those cases were decided on their own facts, and this case, which relates to different requests, must be decided on its own facts as well.

In order to decide this appeal, the Tribunal must decide the following questions:

Each of the parties has made submissions on specific numbered questions in the Letters, in support of their differing views about these questions in the context of the appeal. For the reasons set out below, the Tribunal has not conducted a question-by-question analysis treating the Letters as containing 80 separate potential FOIA requests. In the Tribunal’s view, for the reasons explained below, each Letter is to be treated as an FOIA request, although some of the questions in each of the Letters fall outside of FOIA and are therefore not “part of” a request for the purposes of FOIA, although they form parts of the same documents.

The Appellant says that he did not intend that the Letters should be FOIA requests, although he does not submit that they should not be treated as such.

The Council submits that it was entitled to treat each Letter as correspondence with an individual in an attempt to engage that individual in debate, and in the circumstances was not “required to trawl through” the Letters to identify FOIA requests.

The Tribunal does not accept this submission. It amounts to saying that a public authority can ignore FOIA requests if they are contained within correspondence which the authority subjectively considers to be of a different context. That cannot be the case.

The Tribunal does agree with the Council that a number of the questions in the Letters do not fall within FOIA, as they are about opinions, beliefs or memories held by individuals. Examples include “What is your opinion of [Voices]? (Letter 1, question 3) and “Do you agree with my assessment that up until 28 April 2015 every aspect of [the Council's] involvement with [Voices] had gone exceedingly well?” (Letter 2, question 22).

By s84 FOIA, subject to two exceptions which are not relevant for this purpose, “information” means “information recorded in any form”. Accordingly, to be a request falling within FOIA, a request must be for recorded information. For this reason, some of the questions do not fall within FOIA.

Further, one of the questions (Letter 2, question 40) was a request that the Council provide certain information to the Tribunal, presumably in connection with the Appellant's separate appeal in case number 2023/0169. This is not a request for information falling within s1.

The remaining questions in the Letters did constitute FOIA requests. They were requests which met all of the requirements in s1. If the Council did not hold information in relation to one or more of these questions, then that is one legitimate basis on which it could have responded.

The Appellant’s submissions set the Letters in the context of his overall dealings with the Council. He criticises the Council for its failure to respond properly to previous FOIA requests. More broadly he characterises its approach as “gaslighting” and abusive, and says that it is defending itself by criticising and attacking him.

The Council's submissions on vexatiousness focus tightly on the relevant law and in particular the decisions in Dransfield and in CP v Information Commissioner [2016] UKUT 0427 (AAC).

Following these authorities, which set out the established law on this question, the Tribunal has considered the “themes” referred to in Dransfield, and has considered the Letters in the round in light of all the relevant circumstances.

In relation to motive, the Appellant’s concerns in this matter cannot neatly be subdivided into those which relate to Voices, those which relate to specific actions of the Council, and those which relate more broadly to his underlying concerns regarding the Council’s actions. The Tribunal does not accept that the Appellant was solely motivated by a personal grudge against the Council, or by his concerns regarding Voices, but finds that his concerns regarding its decision not to distribute Voices were part of his motivation in sending the Letters. Some of the questions related expressly to Voices, a matter which has been covered extensively in correspondence between the parties in the past.

Regarding the value or serious purpose of the requests there is again no straightforward classification which can be applied across the questions in the Letters. Some relate narrowly to matters regarding Voices, while others are broader.

The Council bases its submissions on this point on challenging whether any victim of child sexual exploitation could be interested in the subject matter of the questions. This is not the relevant test.

The Appellant, supported by T’s witness evidence, submits that the Letters have value in his campaign for transparency on the part of the Council more generally.

The Council emphasises the burden on it in responding to the Letters, but provides almost no evidence to support this. When asked about this at the hearing, Mr Knibbe seemed to say that even providing such evidence would be an unreasonable burden to place on the Council. This is disappointing, especially given that the Council has managed to put together a 14-page table itemising each of the 80 questions across the two Letters and categorising each question by reference to five classes depending on how the Council submits that each question should be treated. It ought to have been possible for the Council to give an indication of how much time it would have taken properly to respond to the Letters, but it has not done so, or seemingly tried to.

In relation to whether the Letters are harassing or distressing, the Council points to the tone of some of the questions as being harassing in nature.

It is not necessary, or even appropriate, for the Tribunal to decide in favour of one party or another on each of these themes separately. Rather, the Tribunal must consider the Letters as a whole, in their relevant context.

The starting point is to consider whether there is a reasonable foundation for thinking that the information sought would be of value to the Appellant, or to the public or any section of the public (per Arden LJ in Dransfield at [68]).

The Tribunal has found that the Appellant was motivated to send the Letters in part, but not entirely, by a desire to pursue his ongoing concerns regarding the Council’s decision not to distribute Voices. This decision was taken more than eight years before the Letters were sent, and has been the subject of a long series of FOIA requests and appeals by the Appellant since then, resulting in the issuing and reissuing of single refusal notices by the Council. To this extent, while his concerns regarding this decision are reasonable, the continued pursuit of them in this way is disproportionate to their value.

To the extent that the Appellant's motive was wider concerns regarding the Council’s transparency, this is entirely legitimate; but to the extent that the Letters were motivated by such concerns, their focus on the minutiae of events relating mainly to dealings between the Appellant and the Council means that they are disproportionate to their value in achieving this aim as well.

The history of correspondence between the parties is relevant (Dransfield, Upper Tribunal, at [29]). The Tribunal notes the extensive correspondence sent by the Appellant to the Council on related issues over the past decade. The Appellant has pursued a long and determined campaign for transparency and accountability on the part of the Council, and a very substantial part of this campaign has related to one specific decision regarding the distribution of Voices. The Appellant is fully aware of the single refusal notices which the Council has issued but has continued to correspond on the same issue with the Council and those who act on its behalf.

The tone and contents of the Letters are also relevant. The Tribunal does not accept the Council’s submissions that seeking to establish “blame” is necessarily to be criticised. Rather, if a member of the public considers that public authorities might be worthy of blame, then FOIA is an important mechanism for them to seek to establish this. Nevertheless, looking at the critical tone of the Letters, in the context of previous correspondence, the Tribunal does accept that the Letters are properly seen as aggressive. For example, Letter 2 begins with the question “Do you agree that the feedback you sent me on 15 September 2015 made no sense whatsoever?”

For these reasons, the Tribunal concludes that the requests in the Letters were vexatious.

As set out above, the Tribunal has not carried out a question-by-question analysis. The Tribunal considers that the Letters in their entirety, to the extent that they were FOIA requests, were vexatious in line with the guidance given by the Upper Tribunal and Court of Appeal. The tone, content and scope of the Letters, seen in the context of the history of correspondence between the parties, renders them so. On this basis, it is not possible or appropriate to extract individual questions from the Letters and say that these were not vexatious.

It may be that the Appellant could have asked some of these questions in a different way, using a different format, and that these would not have been vexatious requests. But this is speculation.

On the basis that the Letters were vexatious, the Council can only rely on s17(6) to decline to respond if their subject matter falls within the scope of the SRN, such that s17(6)(b) applies, and if it would in the circumstances have been unreasonable to expect the Council to have served a further notice (s17(6)(c)).

The scope of the SRN is set out at [30] above. It is clumsily worded, referring to “subject matter that relates to [Voices] and associated lines of enquiries [sic] that are rooted in [Voices]”. Nevertheless, there are some questions in the Letters which clearly fall within this. Examples include “When and how, as Leader of [the Council], did you receive information about the “evaluation” that Jean Imray received on 23 July 2015 of [Voices]? (Letter 1, question 19) and “Was it agreed at the DLT Meeting on 9 March 2015, that [the Council] would order 1500 copies of [Voices] and circulate a copy to every Social Workers [sic]?” (Letter 2, question 10).

In the Council’s submission, 28 of the questions in Letter 1 and 38 of those in Letter 2 either relate expressly to or are “rooted in” Voices. The Appellant did not make any submissions in the same terms, but it is clear that some, although not all, of the questions on which he chose to focus his appeal do relate expressly to Voices.

As with other aspects of this appeal, it is not possible to say that every part of the Letters in their entirety either does or does not explicitly fall within the scope of the SRN. Examples of individual questions which, if taken on their own, do not, include: “At what date after 19 October [2020] did [the Council] change the policy about members of the public asking questions at Cabinet meetings and at Council meetings?” (Letter 1, question 38) and “Can you provide an approximate number of Social Workers employed by [the Council] in March 2015?” (Letter 2, question 11).

However, having decided that, taken as a whole, each Letter was an FOIA request and was at least in part motivated by the Appellant's concerns regarding Voices, it follows that, in the Tribunal’s view, the Letters fell within the scope of the SRN and therefore within section 17(6)(b).

Would it have been unreasonable in all the circumstances to expect the Council to serve a further notice in relation to the Letters?

Again, the mixed nature of the questions in the Letters is relevant. It follows from what the Tribunal has said above that some of the questions could have been asked in isolation, unrelated to Voices. If they had been, then they would not have fallen within the scope of the SRN. Because of this, the Tribunal finds that, given the mixed nature of the questions in the Letters, it would not have been unreasonable to have expected the Council to give a further notice under s17(5). On this basis the Letters do not fall within the scope of section 17(6)(c), and accordingly the Decision Notice was wrong on this point.

The matters which are of underlying concern to the Appellant, the sexual abuse and exploitation of children, are of the utmost seriousness. The promotion of transparency and accountability regarding these matters is an important and valuable task. The Tribunal is conscious of this in making its decision.

This appeal is not about the Appellant’s campaign for transparency regarding the Council’s handling of child sexual exploitation. The Tribunal makes no comment on that in this decision. This appeal is about the Commissioner’s decision regarding two specific FOIA requests made by the Appellant.

The Tribunal has found that the Commissioner was correct to treat the Letters as vexatious requests, but incorrect - as the Commissioner to some extent acknowledges - to decide that the Council was not required to notify the Appellant of its decision on these requests.

In the circumstances, the Tribunal does not make an order requiring further action from the Council or the Commissioner, as the Appellant has had a full response to his requests through the appeal process.