A Freedom of Information appeal brought by a member of the public seeking a decade’s worth of complaints data about a Scottish dental practice has been dismissed by the First‑tier Tribunal, which ruled that the General Dental Council (GDC) was entitled to refuse the request on cost grounds.
In a decision handed down today, the Tribunal upheld an earlier ruling by the Information Commissioner (IC) that the GDC correctly applied **section 12(1)** of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which allows public bodies to reject requests when responding would exceed the £450 cost limit — equivalent to 18 hours of staff time.
The appellant, Alexander Kelly, had asked the GDC in December 2024 to disclose complaints made to the Dental Complaints Service (DCS) about a single dental practice and any registered professionals working there. The request covered a ten‑year period from 2014 to 2024.
The GDC initially refused to confirm or deny holding some of the information, arguing that doing so could reveal personal data about registrants. That refusal was challenged, and the IC ordered the regulator to issue a fresh response.
When it did so in August 2025, the GDC said it did not routinely record the name of a dental practice and that the only way to identify relevant complaints would be through a "manual review of all 6,655 cases" opened between 2015 and 2024. Even at five minutes per case, it estimated more than 550 hours of work would be required, far above what the law permits.
Kelly argued that the GDC’s time estimate was flawed because it had not undertaken a sampling exercise and because potentially relevant data fields had not been searched. He also insisted the regulator must hold information referencing the establishment because he had personally submitted a complaint identifying the practice.
The Tribunal, however, rejected those arguments. It found the GDC had given “realistic and reasonable” estimates and that a sampling exercise, while normally expected, was not legally required. It also accepted the Commissioner’s conclusion that even a narrower search - for example restricting the timeframe to two years - would still significantly exceed the cost limit.
The Tribunal endorsed earlier case law confirming that section 12 applies *regardless* of how efficient or inefficient a public authority’s record-keeping may be. It noted that while the appellant raised genuine public interest concerns, the cost exemption is “not subject to a public interest test”.
The panel stressed that even using “optimistic” assumptions, halving the GDC’s estimated review time to 2.5 minutes per case, a search would still consume more than 62 hours, more than three times the legal limit.
The Tribunal also concluded that the GDC had complied with its duty under section 16 of FOIA to assist the requester. This included:
- conducting additional searches,
- disclosing information outside the initial scope to help the appellant, and
- explaining how narrowing the timeframe could make the request manageable, though potentially engaging personal‑data exemptions.
Judge J. K. Swaney ruled that the Information Commissioner was correct to uphold the GDC’s application of section 12(1). The appeal was dismissed, and the Commissioner’s decision notice IC‑429851‑W3D4 was upheld in full.
