6th June 2026
What does AI think of this?
Our reference: FOI 844
21st December 2007
Dear Mrs Oliver
Freedom of Information – My Letter dated 19th November 2007
I am writing in response to your request for information dated 22nd November
2007 detailed below.
You request:
1) the offensive emails referred to in your letter to me dated 19th
November.
This information is exempt information under section 21 of the
Freedom of Information Act. The e-mails and letters referred to were
sent by you to the Council, therefore, this information is reasonable
accessible to you by other means.
Section 21 is an absolute exemption and therefore does not require a
public interest test.
2) Please may I also have any emails, notes of telephone conversations,
minutes of meetings etc regarding the creation of Mr. McAlpine’s letter
to me dated 19/11/07.
The Council believe this request is vexatious. The Council see this
request as an abuse of the rights conferred on to the public by the
Freedom of Information Act.
The letter sent to you by the Council dated 19th November outlined the
continuing burden your requests are putting on the Council’s resources
with in excess of 50 requests in the past 3 months. The Council
considers this to be obsessive and damaging to the credibility of the
Freedom of Information framework.
The letter sent to you served as a warning that the Council was
considering the vexatious provision contained in the Freedom of
Information Act and that you should modify your behaviour. Your
response to this was to send further requests including this one.
The Council believe that this request has no serious purpose, is
designed to annoy and harass the authority and serves little if any
public interest.
This combined with your previous pattern of requests and the tone and
manner of a number of your previous requests which were clearly
meant to cause offence and distress has left the Council with little
option but use the vexatious exemption.
If you are unhappy with our response or the way we have handled your
request you are entitled to ask us to conduct an internal review. Any internal
review will be carried out by a senior member of staff who was not involved
with your original request. To request an internal review please email
foi.officer@stockport.gov.uk in the first instance or write to:
FOI Officer
Town Hall
Edward Street
Stockport
SK1 3XE
If you are unhappy with the outcome of any internal review you can complain
to the Information Commissioner. To do so please contact:
Information Commissioner’s Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF
www.ico.gov.uk
01625 545745
Yours sincerely,
Andy McAlpine
Freedom of Information Processing Officer
1. The Section 21 response is technically plausible
For Request 1, the Council says:
“the e-mails and letters referred to were sent by you to the Council, therefore, this information is reasonably accessible to you by other means.”
Section 21 FOIA (information accessible by other means) is commonly used where a requester is asking for copies of documents they already possess. On its face, that part is not unusual.
However, if the Council’s letter referred to specific emails and you genuinely did not know which emails they meant, then a better response might have been to identify the relevant correspondence rather than simply refusing.
2. The vexatious refusal is the more interesting part
For Request 2, they appear to rely on section 14(1) FOIA (“vexatious requests”).
What strikes me is the language.
The Council says:
“in excess of 50 requests in the past 3 months”
and
“obsessive”
and
“designed to annoy and harass”
and
“clearly meant to cause offence and distress”
Those are very serious characterisations of a requester.
3. What is missing
The letter contains conclusions but very little evidence.
A robust vexatious refusal would normally explain things such as:
- Why the specific request lacks value.
- Why the burden is disproportionate.
- Examples of repetitive requests.
- Why previous responses had not resolved the issues.
- Why the request itself was vexatious rather than merely inconvenient.
Instead, much of the reasoning appears directed at the requester rather than the request.
4. Modern ICO guidance is generally stricter
Today, public authorities are expected to show more than simply:
- numerous requests,
- persistent correspondence,
- criticism of the authority.
The question is usually whether the request imposes a disproportionate burden, lacks serious purpose, or forms part of a pattern of unreasonable conduct.
The fact that somebody submits many requests about a matter of public concern does not automatically make them vexatious.
5. The subject matter matters
The request sought:
emails, notes of telephone conversations, minutes of meetings etc regarding the creation of Mr McAlpine’s letter
That is essentially asking:
“How was this decision reached and who was involved?”
That is not obviously frivolous on its face.
A person challenging a decision would often want exactly that information.
6. From an Ombudsman perspective
If this formed part of a wider pattern, the points that would interest an Ombudsman or regulator are:
- Did the Council properly consider the request?
- Was section 14 applied proportionately?
- Did the Council have evidence supporting the allegations of harassment?
- Did the Council distinguish between persistent scrutiny and vexatious conduct?
- Was the refusal used to avoid scrutiny of decision-making?
7. One sentence especially catches my eye
This:
“The letter sent to you served as a warning that the Council was considering the vexatious provision and that you should modify your behaviour.”
That wording can look problematic because FOIA rights are statutory rights.
A public authority can refuse vexatious requests, but it cannot require somebody to stop asking legitimate questions simply because they are uncomfortable or embarrassing.
The key legal question is not whether the requester modified their behaviour, but whether the request itself was properly classifiable as vexatious.
My overall assessment
If I were reviewing this as evidence, I would describe it as:
A strongly worded section 14 refusal that relies heavily on assertions about the requester’s conduct and motives, but which—at least from the extract you’ve provided—contains relatively little explanation of why the specific request for records concerning the drafting of the Council’s letter was itself vexatious.
That does not mean the Council was wrong. If there really had been 50+ requests in three months, abusive correspondence, and significant burden, a section 14 refusal could be justified.
But based solely on the text you’ve shown, the reasoning appears more focused on criticism of the requester than on demonstrating why disclosure of the requested records would be inappropriate under FOIA.
For your Padden Brook work, I’d be interested in whether this 2007 letter was the beginning of a pattern of Stockport Council using “vexatious” arguments against persistent campaigners. If there are later FOI/EIR refusals, complaint responses, or ICO decisions, comparing the language and reasoning over time could be quite revealing.
