A government department's reliance on section 14(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to block a request for a Developer Remediation Contract has been overturned by the First-tier Tribunal, which found that the Information Commissioner's vexatiousness assessment was flawed because it proceeded on an artificially wide reading of the request while ignoring correspondence that made its practical focus clear.
In Gary Cressman v The Information Commissioner and Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities [2026] UKFTT 00905 (GRC), the Upper Tribunal ruled that a section 14(1) burden assessment must engage with the request as it was actually pursued, not just as it was originally worded.
In April 2023, the appellant made a request to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) for the Developer Remediation Contract entered into between the Secretary of State and Barratt Developments PLC, together with all appendices, addenda, and associated documentation.
The request arose from the post-Grenfell programme under which the government entered into contracts with major developers requiring them to remediate residential buildings with serious fire safety defects. A standard pro forma version of the contract had been published, but the appellant identified that the published version omitted the operational detail leaseholders and residents most needed: which specific buildings were covered by the contractual commitments, and what timescales had been set for completing remediation works. The information he sought was contained in the unpublished appendices.
DLUHC initially refused the request under section 38 (health and safety) and section 40 (personal data). In seeking internal review, the appellant indicated that disclosure would "serve my purposes" if building names were redacted in any response, except for one building, Centenary Plaza. DLUHC's internal review response referred to a "revised request to see only the data relating to Centenary Plaza" while maintaining the refusal.
During the Information Commissioner's investigation, DLUHC made a significant change of position. It withdrew its reliance on sections 38 and 40 entirely and instead invoked section 14(1), arguing that compliance would impose a grossly disproportionate burden.
DLUHC's case was that the appendices covered approximately 750 buildings, that meaningful compliance would require an individualised assessment of each entry - considering applicable exemptions, the status of remediation works, and the need for consultation in some cases. Even a preliminary five-minute-per-building review would amount to over 62 hours of officer time. The ICO accepted this analysis and issued a decision notice in March 2024 upholding the refusal on vexatiousness grounds.
The Tribunal noted that the ICO had acknowledged in correspondence that the appellant had "refined his request slightly" but concluded he had not narrowed it to Centenary Plaza alone. On that basis, the burden calculation proceeded against the full 750-building dataset.
The tribunal (Judge Kiai and members Taylor and Yates) allowed the appeal, finding the decision notice not in accordance with the law in three linked respects:
Misconstrued scope. The Tribunal accepted that the original request was wide in its formal terms. However, it emphasised that a request must be interpreted objectively in its full context, including subsequent correspondence, not confined to a purely literal reading of the original wording. The appellant's statement at internal review - that disclosure limited to Centenary Plaza would serve his purposes - did not formally vary the request, but it provided a clear and identifiable practical focus. The ICO had failed to engage adequately with that context when setting the parameters of its burden assessment.
The authority's own conduct was ignored. DLUHC itself had distinguished between disclosure "relating to Centenary Plaza" and disclosure of "all of the information on the list", characterising the former as something it had considered as a realistic possibility. The Tribunal found this distinction directly material: it showed that the large estimated burden was not an inescapable consequence of the request as actually pursued, but depended on treating it as broader than both parties had at one stage understood it to be. The ICO's failure to engage with this contradiction undermined its reasoning.
The value side of the balance was distorted. Because the burden calculation was conducted against an over-expansive reading of the request, the countervailing weight of the public interest - access to operational information about building safety remediation for leaseholders - was not assessed on a proper footing.
The Tribunal was careful to note that this concern went to the integrity of the evaluative exercise, not to any conclusion about the outcome. It emphasised that section 14(1) is a technical statutory concept that does not reflect on the good faith of the requester or the legitimacy of the subject matter.
The Tribunal was equally careful to confirm the limits of its decision: it did not order disclosure of any specific information and did not determine whether any other exemption applies. DLUHC must reconsider the request from scratch, determine what it holds within scope, and either communicate the information or issue a properly reasoned refusal notice addressing any exemptions it wishes to rely on, with a 35-day compliance deadline running from 19 June 2026.
