A troubling pattern emerging in police use of section 14 FOIA refusals?
Freedom of Information Act section 14(1) permits a public authority to refuse a request where it is considered “vexatious”. In principle, this is understandable. Authorities should not be subjected to harassment, badgering or truly oppressive conduct. Some, seemingly more casually, less harshly refer to the requests as ‘burdensome’.
But section 14 is also one of the easiest exemptions to state and one of the hardest for an applicant to test.
A refusal will often say that the requester has made:
- “numerous”,
- “similar”,
- “overlapping”, or
- “repeated” requests
and that these have created a burden on the authority. The immediate problem is obvious:
- how many is “numerous”?
- how similar is “similar”?
- and what exactly is being counted?
Recent police responses suggest that these are not academic questions. A closer examination of three separate cases involving:
- the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC),
- Gwent Police and
- Staffordshire Police
reveals a strikingly familiar pattern; request volume asserted, particulars withheld, and multiple forms of correspondence blended into one burden narrative.