The First-tier Tribunal has dismissed an appeal against the Financial Ombudsman Service's refusal of a request for all its staff training and guidance material, rejecting the appellant's argument that the service could have complied within the cost limit by simply handing over its databases and repositories, while finding that the service breached its duty to provide advice and assistance under section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
In Derrick Welsh v The Information Commissioner [2026] UKFTT 1281 (GRC), Judge Stephen Roper, sitting with members Raz Edwards and Marion Saunders, upheld Decision Notice IC-385911-F7S0, in which the Commissioner found the FOS entitled to rely on section 12(1). The Commissioner did not attend the hearing, held by video on 5 June 2026, at which Welsh represented himself.
Welsh had written to the FOS on 1 March 2025 asking for a copy of all of its staff training and guidance material. He said he was specifically interested in loss of rent but would locate the relevant section himself if everything was sent, and that he wanted to understand what guidance staff were given because of inconsistencies in decisions published on the service's website.
The FOS refused the request on 13 March 2025 on the basis that compliance would exceed the appropriate limit and maintained that position at internal review in May. During the Commissioner's investigation it also sought to rely on section 14.
The FOS explained that the material was not held in a single location but spread across its Discovery knowledge platform, an internal learning platform, a core learning and development folder, departmental holdings and internal correspondence. Its itemised estimate came to 11,679.7 hours, or £291,994, of which 10,366 hours were attributed to the core learning and development folder alone, and it said the figures probably still did not cover every search needed.
Reviewing correspondence returned by a search for the term "loss of rent" was estimated at 25.8 hours by itself. The Commissioner found the estimates reasonable and evidence-based and did not need to consider section 14. He also found the FOS had met its section 16 duty by suggesting Welsh narrow the request to guidance held centrally, such as on Discovery, and to a specific topic.
Section 12(1) relieves a public authority of the duty to comply with a request where it estimates that the cost would exceed the appropriate limit, set by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 at £450 for authorities not listed in Part I of Schedule 1 to the Act.
At the prescribed rate of £25 an hour that equates to 18 hours spent determining whether the information is held and locating, retrieving and extracting it. The exemption is not subject to a public interest test. Section 16(1) requires an authority to provide advice and assistance to requesters so far as it would be reasonable to do so.
Welsh's grounds of appeal were that the FOS and the Commissioner had wrongly assumed the material would need to be extracted, converted or reformatted. He had asked only for the data as held, would examine it in its existing form, and considered it implausible that training material was not centrally stored and readily copied. The FOS, he said, had inflated its estimate by including unnecessary extraction work and the Commissioner had accepted the figures without scrutinising that assumption.
The tribunal rejected the premise. An authority responding to a request must identify, retrieve and extract the information sought rather than disclose entire repositories, because it needs to ensure it is not releasing confidential or sensitive material or personal data, is entitled not to disclose more than was requested even where that would be more efficient, and must treat disclosure under FOIA as disclosure to the world at large. Its own role was not to judge whether the FOS's record keeping was complete or well organised but to assess the request against how the information was in fact held.
It found the estimates were based on enquiries of relevant staff, testing exercises and knowledge of the systems involved, and were not speculative. Even if the actual time were significantly less, it would still considerably exceed the limit. Welsh had offered no alternative methodology for locating and extracting the material within 18 hours beyond his suggestion that the databases be handed over. The tribunal also treated the breadth of the request as a relevant factor, noting that even confined to loss of rent it sought all material on that topic, that the FOS's records were not categorised to allow ready identification of it, and that the correspondence search alone exceeded the limit.
On section 16, which Welsh had not challenged, the tribunal reached a different view from the Commissioner. The explanations the FOS had given the Commissioner about where the material was held, why different materials sat in different locations and what the Discovery platform was had not been given to Welsh when the request was refused, nor had the FOS adequately explained why it could not respond within the limit or suggested narrowing the date range. The tribunal found the FOS had not complied with its duty to provide reasonable advice and assistance and that the Commissioner erred in concluding otherwise.
That finding did not affect the outcome. The tribunal found Welsh was not inclined to refine the request in any event, having persisted in seeking everything as originally worded on the basis that it could be provided with minimal effort, that the FOS could not have directed him to specific materials given the number of locations involved, and that no refinement would have brought the request within the limit. Having regard to section 58, it saw no basis to substitute the decision notice and dismissed the appeal.
