The First-tier Tribunal has partly overturned an Information Commissioner's decision allowing Cleveland Police to withhold the entirety of its Child Protection Guidance, ruling that the force was not entitled to refuse the whole document under the law enforcement exemption and ordering disclosure of a redacted version that reveals the majority of its contents.
The panel issued a substituted decision notice requiring the force to disclose the redacted guidance under FOIA within 14 days.
Armstrong's request, made in November 2024 in the context of investigations into historic abuse at a named detention centre, sought Cleveland Police's policies and procedures on:
- vetting of all staff members;
- the training of staff working on a child sex abuse investigation; and
- how a major investigation should be conducted, later clarified to cover all policies, procedures and guidelines on conducting non-recent child sexual abuse investigations, with reference to Operation Hydrant and national guidance.
Section 31(1)(a) and (b) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 exempts information whose disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the prevention or detection of crime or the apprehension or prosecution of offenders. It is a qualified exemption subject to the public interest test, and under the approach in Hogan v Information Commissioner, as approved by the Court of Appeal, the authority must show a causal relationship between disclosure and a prejudice that is real, actual or of substance.
The force initially refused under section 21, pointing to published policies, then disclosed a single extract dealing with adults abused in childhood and withheld the remainder of the guidance under section 31. The Commissioner's decision notice of 30 September 2025 upheld that position, accepting that disclosure would be likely to allow interested parties to build a picture of law enforcement tactics despite receiving little evidence from the force that the prejudice would occur.
Having met in March 2026 and found the force's case wanting, the tribunal panel directed Cleveland Police to answer specific questions, including why its concerns applied to the withheld material but not to the policies it had already pointed to in the public domain.
When the force maintained that the document could not be "meaningfully separated or redacted", the tribunal, having read the withheld material, disagreed. It noted that significant sections seemed to fall outside the harms claimed and that the already-disclosed extract contained information of a similar nature to other withheld sections.
It then directed the force to produce a redacted version removing only the material genuinely covered by the exemptions, supported by a closed explanation justifying each individual paragraph redacted with specific reference to its content rather than generic overall statements.
The result vindicated both sides in part. The redacted document, already copied to Armstrong during the proceedings, discloses most of the guidance. The tribunal accepted that the material still withheld operational details of safeguarding and police protection processes, procedures for medical examinations, investigative steps against suspects, and tactical information about information sharing with local authorities, health and education partners and engaged section 31(1)(a) and (b), since offenders could use it to conceal offending, destroy evidence and anticipate police steps.
The public interest balance favoured maintaining the exemptions for that residue, the panel finding that the withheld material concerns current as well as historic allegations and that its relevance to Operation Hydrant-type accountability was limited once the section on non-recent abuse had been disclosed in full. A small number of redactions of external agency contact details and drafting officers' names were upheld under section 40.
The tribunal acknowledged a strong public interest in understanding how serious child abuse allegations are investigated and in transparency where there have been past failures, but held that disclosure of information enabling abusers to evade detection could never serve the public interest.
The decision in Mark Armstrong v The Information Commissioner [2026] UKFTT 1092 (GRC) is available here: https://caselaw.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukftt/grc/2026/1092
