The First-tier Tribunal has dismissed an appeal against Camden Council's refusal to disclose its historic contracts with Thames Water, finding that the request was made not for a legitimate information rights purpose but as an act of revenge following a separate dispute with the Council's social services department.
In Niall Wermter v The Information Commissioner & The Mayor and Burgesses of the London Borough of Camden [2026] UKFTT 677 (GRC), decided on 12 May 2026, the Tribunal upheld the Council's reliance on Regulation 12(4)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (manifestly unreasonable request) and found that the request would equally have been vexatious under section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
The appeal had its origins in two separate strands of dispute between the appellant and the Council. The first concerned the legality of water charges. Following the decisions in Jones v Southwark London Borough Council [2016] EWHC 457 (Ch) and Kingston-Upon-Thames v Moss [2020] EWCA Civ 1381, in which courts held that local authorities acting as water resellers had failed to pass on discounts to tenants, a number of councils established repayment schemes.
Camden maintained that its arrangements with Thames Water were different, but had nonetheless established a £3.7m provision in its accounts to meet estimated costs of reclaims. The appellant considered this provision to be evidence of fraud by Council officers and sought disclosure of all agreements between the Council and Thames Water from 1989 to 2019 in order, he said, to expose that wrongdoing.
The second strand concerned a deeply personal dispute with Camden's social services department arising from the appellant's involvement in the care of a third party in 2023. The Tribunal was careful to note that it was not its role to adjudicate on whether social services had acted appropriately, but acknowledged that the situation had been extremely distressing for the appellant.
The connection between the two strands was explicit and decisive. In a letter to the Council's borough solicitor in November 2023, the appellant made clear that he would not pursue the water charges issue if the Council resolved the social services matter to his satisfaction. When the Council did not comply, he proceeded to make the information request. In oral evidence before the Tribunal, the appellant accepted that his motivation was in part "revenge."
The judgment sets out in considerable detail a sustained campaign of correspondence directed at Council officers in the months leading up to and following the request in June 2024. The appellant sent multiple daily emails and voicemails to a range of officers - including the borough solicitor, the director of corporate services, the chief executive, and the freedom of information team - making repeated threats that officers would face disciplinary action, dismissal, criminal prosecution for misconduct in public office, or imprisonment.
The communications were described by the Council's FOI lead as among the worst she had encountered in her career in terms of "vitriol and threats," and the Tribunal accepted that they had caused significant distress to members of staff.
The Tribunal also rejected the appellant's contention that the Council had deliberately classified the request under EIR rather than FOIA in order to vex him by obtaining a time extension under Regulation 7. It found that the officer responsible had honestly formed the view that the contracts were environmental information, without any prior knowledge of the appellant or his dealings with the Council.
Applying the Dransfield factors holistically, the Tribunal assessed burden, motive, the value or serious purpose of the request, and harassment and distress of staff.
On burden, while the request itself was relatively focused, the Tribunal held that the entire course of dealings - including extensive correspondence predating the request - was properly taken into account, and that this had placed a disproportionate burden on the Council.
On purpose and motive, the Tribunal accepted that there was genuine public interest in transparency around the Council's Thames Water contracts, given the potential scale of tenant overcharging and the existence of the £3.7m provision. However, it did not accept that the appellant had a legitimate serious purpose. The water charges issue had been deployed initially as a threat - leverage to force the Council's hand on the social services dispute - and then pursued as retribution when the Council refused to comply. The Tribunal found in terms that using statutory information rights to carry out a threatened exposure, explicitly as revenge for a public authority's failure to act on demands made in a wholly separate context, is not a legitimate use of EIR or FOIA.
On harassment and distress, the Tribunal found that the content and tone of the appellant's communications (which included instructions to officers not to eat, drink, or use the toilet until the information was produced, and repeated threats of imprisonment) were likely to cause and had in fact caused distress. It confirmed that the public interest value of the requested information cannot act as a "trump card" against these findings.
The Tribunal dismissed the appeal, upheld the Regulation 12(4)(b) exception, and found that the public interest balance favoured maintaining it. It further found that the request would have been vexatious under section 14 FOIA.
