Mark Armstrong v The Information Commissioner

In this decision the following terms have the following meanings:

Any reference to a section of an Act is a reference 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. The parties consented to the appeal being decided without a hearing, and the Tribunal is satisfied that this was a fair and just way to decide this appeal.

On 7 January 2025, the Appellant sent the Request to Humberside Police, in the following terms:

This was followed by a list of ICO decision notice numbers, by reference to years.

On 4 February 2025, Humberside Police responded, refusing the Request on the basis that the information was reasonably accessible by other means.

On the same day, the Appellant requested an internal review. He argued that he did not believe that Humberside Police had disclosed all of the information it held within the scope of the Request.

On 27 June 2025 Humberside Police wrote to the Appellant to inform him that it would no longer provide him with internal reviews of his FOIA requests. It did not provide a specific response to his request for an internal review regarding the Request.

On 24 April 2025 the Appellant complained to the Commissioner. The Commissioner carried out an investigation and issued the Decision Notice on 4 November 2025. The Commissioner concluded that Humberside Police had correctly refused the Request and on the balance of probabilities did not hold any further recorded information within scope.

The Appellant appealed to the Tribunal.

The Appellant's grounds of appeal are briefly stated. These are:

It is not clear whether the Appellant is referring here to the actions of the Commissioner or of Humberside Police. The Tribunal infers from the context that it is the latter.

The Appellant has provided no arguments in support of these grounds and has made little effort to substantiate them.

In his response, the Commissioner submits that:

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

The current statutory code of practice was issued on 4 July 2018. This covers matters including the provision of advice and assistance, and the conduct of internal reviews. As set out in the code of practice, such reviews are a matter of best practice, and are not a statutory requirement.

Section 21 provides that information is exempt if it is reasonably accessible to the requester by other means.

The Tribunal's jurisdiction in this appeal is to determine whether the Decision Notice is in accordance with the law, and whether the Commissioner ought to have exercised his discretion differently (see s58(1)). It is not the Tribunal’s role to conduct a judicial review of the Commissioner’s decision, or of the decision of the public authority which received the Request.

The evidence seen by the Tribunal shows that the Appellant has a long history of making information requests to Humberside Police. The letter containing the Request refers to 40 separate decision notices of the Commissioner in relation to FOIA and subject access requests in which the Appellant says that the Commissioner “found that the Humberside Police had violated [his] information rights”, and states that he has “numerous other section 50 complaints against the Humberside Police regarding the same issues”. The letter says that as a result, the Commissioner has issued Humberside Police with practise recommendations and carried out audits, and the College of Policing has issued guidance on how requests should be handled.

After reciting this history, the Appellant requests all information which Humberside Police holds regarding “these issues”.

There is the potential for some ambiguity in the Request. The Appellant’s reference to “these issues” could be a reference to the preceding paragraph of the Request, relating to how complaints regarding service delivery should be submitted, or it could be a reference to all of the preceding text in the letter.

In the Tribunal’s view, the Commissioner’s reading of the Request, as relating to the Appellant’s queries regarding service delivery complaints, is the correct one. The reference to “these issues” immediately follows an acknowledgement of some information having been received, and a statement that certain other information has not been received. The most straightforward reading of this is that the relevant paragraph is a reference to what the Appellant believes is missing.

This would also be consistent with the Appellant’s internal review request which refers only to this narrow class of information.

The Response:

As part of his investigation, the Commissioner liaised with Humberside Police regarding the background to the Response. In a letter dated 28 October 2025 Humberside Police described the searches it had carried out before responding to the Request and gave the Commissioner further information regarding the background to the Request. The Appellant will have seen this letter as part of the Tribunal bundle.

Based on the evidence it has seen, the Tribunal is satisfied that the searches carried out by Humberside Police were appropriate, and, on the balance of probabilities, Humberside Police did not at the relevant time hold any further information which fell within scope of the Request.

It appears that, since the Response was issued, the web address provided in the Response has become redundant, and the evidence before the Tribunal does not confirm definitively what information was available at that address at the time of the Response. However, in the absence of any evidence from the Appellant on this point, and having considered the correspondence between Humberside Police and the Commissioner, the Tribunal is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the information to which Humberside Police referred the Appellant was reasonably available by means other than the Request, and accordingly that the section 21 exemption was correctly applied by Humberside Police.

Regarding the Appellant’s claim that Humberside Police breached the section 16 duty to provide him with advice and assistance, the Commissioner notes that the Decision Notice does not include a finding on this point. He also submits that the Response adequately addresses the various matters raised in the statutory code of practice regarding advice and assistance and that section 16 is not relevant to this appeal.

The Tribunal accepts the Commissioner’s submissions on this ground, with one exception. As noted above, there is the potential for ambiguity in the Request regarding the scope of the Requested Information. It is arguable that Humberside Police could have sought to clarify this. However, the Tribunal agrees that the reading of the Request which was given to it by Humberside Police and by the Commissioner was the correct one, and the Appellant has not disputed this. Accordingly, the Tribunal does not accept that Humberside Police breached its duty to provide advice and assistance.

Turning to the Appellant’s grounds of appeal:

For the reasons set out above, the Tribunal is not persuaded that the Decision Notice contained an error of law, or that the Commissioner ought to have exercised his discretion differently and accordingly dismisses the appeal.