The First-tier Tribunal has ordered North Tyneside Council to respond afresh to a request for records about a school boundary fence after finding the council was not entitled to refuse it as manifestly unreasonable under regulation 12(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, and that the evidence it relied on to show a burdensome course of dealings did not bear scrutiny.
The Tribunal allowed the appeal against Decision Notice IC-372434-Y0Z4 and issued a substituted decision notice requiring the council within 28 days to confirm whether it holds the information and either disclose it or issue a refusal notice on some ground other than regulation 12(4)(b).
The requestor Craig Aynsley, who represented himself, had asked the council in December 2024 for all documents, emails, specifications and drawings relating to a fence to the west of Backworth Park Primary School, towards which the council had paid a £4,411 contribution to the developer Story Homes.
Earlier FOI responses had disclosed the amount, the date and the recipient. Aynsley's argument was that planning conditions requiring a 2.4 metre acoustic fence behind his property were discharged on the basis of a fence that was never built, that the council's 2016 agreement with the developer to fund a replacement fence appeared nowhere on the planning portal, and that the council paid a further £4,944 in 2024 for drainage he says had already been paid for.
The council refused the request in January 2025, stating that all information on the matter had already been disclosed, that the request served only Aynsley's private interests and that his requests showed unreasonable persistence.
It told him at internal review that future requests about the school might also be refused under regulation 12(4)(b). In submissions to the Commissioner it relied on ten information requests over nine months, a warning letter issued in June 2024, an Ombudsman complaint that found no fault on the substantive planning issue, and a chronology of emails to multiple council departments which it said showed a disproportionate drain on officer time.
The Commissioner accepted that the requests had value and were not intended to harass, but found the cumulative burden sufficient to engage the exception and concluded the public interest favoured maintaining it.
Regulation 12(4)(b) permits refusal where a request is manifestly unreasonable, subject to the public interest test and the presumption in favour of disclosure in regulation 12(2). Following the Court of Appeal in Dransfield v Information Commissioner and Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454, the test is for all practical purposes the same as vexatiousness under section 14(1) FOIA, assessed holistically by reference to the burden on the authority, the requester's motive, the value or serious purpose of the request and any harassment or distress to staff, with the hurdle set high.
Based on these factors, the tribunal found the council's case on burden overstated. Of the ten requests cited, one post-dated the request under appeal and concerned a wholly different matter and another related to an unrelated issue. The three earlier fence requests the tribunal saw were very specific and had generated specific answers, and it accepted Aynsley's account that each response prompted a further question because, as he put it, the council was drip-feeding him the information.
The email chronology the council relied on listed 32 messages, but on inspection only eight had been sent by Aynsley and five sent or copied to him; the rest were internal exchanges between council officers about handling his queries. The council's representative, Steven Linsdell-Bell, accepted this when questioned. The tribunal was not satisfied that the nature, frequency and scope of the requests supported the contention that they were overly burdensome.
On motive, the tribunal accepted that Aynsley's principal interest was private but held that it extended to a wider value in scrutinising whether the council had implemented planning conditions where public funds had been spent, and was linked in part to public safety concerns. It found the request had value and serious purpose.
On harassment, it noted the council did not allege any communication had been inappropriate in itself, that there had been no correspondence at all between June and December 2024, and that on occasion it was the council that had advised Aynsley to submit a further request or contact a different department. It found no evidence of harassment or distress to staff.
The tribunal also disagreed with the Commissioner's view that responding would not satisfy Aynsley and further requests were extremely likely. Having reviewed the earlier requests, it considered they had been sent to clarify information provided or to fill obvious gaps, and found no evidence he would keep making requests if given what he sought.
Concluding that the request was not manifestly unreasonable, the tribunal held the exception was not engaged and the public interest balance did not arise. The council had proposed three witnesses but served no statements and did not rely on any of them at the hearing.
The decision is available at https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukftt/grc/2026/1303
