Jurisdiction(s):
United Kingdom

Related legal acts

Key definition

Public authority definition

What does Public authority mean? In legal practice, a public authority is an organisation that performs public functions or statutory duties, often substantially publicly funded or under governmental control (for example central or local government, NHS bodies, police and regulators) and, in some contexts, privately owned or third-sector providers delivering outsourced services. The term has no single definition; its scope is context-specific. In the UK, key regimes define it variously: Human Rights Act 1998 s.6 (core and hybrid public authorities); Freedom of Information Act 2000/FOISA 2002 (primarily listed bodies); Environmental Information Regulations (functional/control test); Data Protection Act 2018 (UK GDPR) adopting the FOI lists; and Equality...

FOI refusals for vexatious or repeated requests: applying the Freedom of Information Act 2000 s 14 and EIR 2004 ‘manifestly unreasonable’ exception, with ICO guidance and case law

Published by a LexisNexis Public Law expert

Practice notes

This Practice Note reviews the provisions for declining vexatious or repeated requests under section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FIA 2000).

Vexatious or repeated requests―scope of the exemption

Section 14 sits within FIA 2000, Pt I, which prescribes in detail how requests made under the statute should be managed. Although it is not included among the right to know exemptions listed in FIA 2000, Pt II, in practice it operates to the same effect, as it allows a public authority to refuse a request for information in specified circumstances.

section 14(1) effectively releases public authorities from the duty set out in FIA 2000, s 1(1), namely to confirm whether information is held and, if it is, to disclose it to the requester. This applies where the request is vexatious. FIA 2000 does not further define ‘vexatious’
section 14(2) provides the mechanism for public authorities to reject requests that are repeated. Specifically, it applies where the authority has already supplied the information, or ‘substantially similar’ information, to the applicant in answer to a previous request, and a ‘reasonable interval’ has not elapsed between the two requests. FIA 2000 does not further define what is considered...

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Susan Wolf

Susan Wolf was formerly a Principal Law lecturer at the Northumbria University School of Law, where she taught law for 26 years. During this time Susan developed the LLM in Information Rights Law and Practice and the Postgraduate Certificate in Data Protection Law at the University. Susan taught on the LLM for 11 years and taught over 350 information rights practitioners, including Information Rights Tribunal members and ICO staff. Susan has delivered training and conference papers nationally and internationally in the field of FOIA 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. She wrote the Law Society Handbook on Environmental Information and was a contributor for the Law Society’s Information Sharing Handbook. Susan was also the co-author of Wolf & Stanley on Environmental Law which went into its sixth edition. After leaving the University in 2017 Susan became a consultant at Act Now Training where she...

Web page updated on 21/05/2026

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