Dillon Crawford v The Information Commissioner

The information sought by the Appellant’s request was not held by the relevant public authority at the time of the request.

Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed.

On 2 February 2025 the Appellant, Mr Dillon Crawford, wrote to the Home Office requesting information in these terms:

The Home Office responded on 12 March 2025, stating:

Mr Crawford challenged the Home Office’s answer on a number of grounds but, following an internal review completed on 9 April 2025, it confirmed its stance, observing:

On 22 April 2025 Mr Crawford complained to the Respondent (‘the Commissioner’) about the way in which the Home Office had dealt with his requests. A detailed investigation followed.

By a Decision Notice dated 4 November 2025 (‘the DN’), the Commissioner determined, on a balance of probabilities, that the Department did not hold the information requested and found separately, rejecting a subsidiary complaint of Mr Crawford, that the Home Office had complied with its advice and assistance obligations under FOIA, s16.

By his notice of appeal dated 4 December 2025 Mr Crawford challenged the Commissioner’s decision, raising four grounds:

By a response dated 4 December 2025 the Commissioner resisted the appeal, essentially on the grounds set out in the Decision Notice.

The appeal came before us for consideration on the papers. Both parties had expressed themselves content with that procedure and we were satisfied that it was just and proper to decide the matter without a hearing.

By the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (‘FOIA’) s1(1) a person making a request for information to a public authority is entitled to be told in writing by the public authority whether it holds information of the description specified in the request and, if so, to have the information communicated to him/her.

For the purposes of FOIA, ‘information’ means information recorded in any form (s84).

A request for a public authority to generate an explanation or a commentary is not a request for information within the scope of the freedom of information legislation (Betts v Information Commissioner (EA/2007/0109), FTT 18 May 2018, paras 33, 68).

Information is ‘held’ by a public authority if it is held by it otherwise than on behalf of another person, or it is held by another person on behalf of the authority (FOIA, s3(2)). Whether particular information is ‘held’ by a public authority is essentially a question of fact (University of Newcastle upon Tyne v ICO and BUAV [2011] UKUT 185 AAC, [41]) and falls to be decided on a balance of probabilities (Bromley v Information Commissioner and Environment Agency EA/2006/0072).

The appeal is brought pursuant to FOIA, s57. The Tribunal’s powers in determining the appeal are delineated in s58 as follows:

We start by reminding ourselves that requests under FOIA are to be interpreted broadly and pragmatically. Pedantry is to be avoided. The public authority must focus on the essence of what is asked for, eschewing technicalities. We will address the appeal in that spirit.

We find no substance in Ground (1). There is nothing to lend support to the notion that the Commissioner misapplied the balance of probabilities test. Nor is there anything in the complaint that the Home Office carried out an inadequate search. On the contrary, that argument seems entirely misplaced. The Home Office must be assumed to know what classes of recorded information it holds. If it asserts that it does not hold costs statistics of the kind sought, the appeal is likely to turn on the Tribunal’s assessment of the correctness of that assertion (considered next, under Ground (2)), not on the quality of the search conducted. In any event, there is no reason to doubt that suitable checks were made before the response was issued.

Like Ground (1), Ground (2) is double-pronged. First, it is said that the Home Office’s claim not to hold the information requested is implausible and should not be believed. We cannot agree. Mr Crawford justifies this part of his appeal on the basis that statistics of the kind sought were provided in 2011 pursuant to an earlier request relating to passport costs incurred. The inference that similar information must be held relating to costs incurred 14 years later is quite unwarranted. There could be any number of reasons why the way in which statistics are collected in any large organisation will be liable to change over time. We see no reason to disbelieve or doubt the plea of ‘not held’ here. The plea is inherently plausible and the challenge is undermined by the fact that the Home Office has freely supplied similar information in the past.

The second point taken under Ground (2) is that the Home Office and/or the Commissioner has/have applied an unduly narrow interpretation to the request. Mindful as we are of the need to interpret any request generously, we cannot agree. Our duty does not extend to re-writing Mr Crawford’s unambiguous request or deeming his request to have been wider than it was.

Ground (3) also fails. Mr Crawford’s complaint that the Home Office failed to comply with FOIA, s10 does not, as he asserts, engage s50(4), which requires the Commissioner to specify in his DN any steps which need to be taken by the public authority in a case where it has failed to comply with the requirements of s1 or s11 or 17. Accordingly, the DN did not contain the error of law complained of. That said, we think it right to place on record here that the Home Office was in breach of the obligation to respond to the request within the statutory time limit and, in that failure, departed from the standard rightly expected of it.

Ground (4) does no more than collect and repeat Grounds (1), (2) and (3), all of which we have rejected. As such, Ground (4) inevitably fails.

We have stood back to survey the appeal in the round, in light of all the assembled material. Doing so only confirms us in our view that it is without merit.

For all the reasons given, the appeal is dismissed.

Finally, we would add that Mr Crawford has had the benefit of advice from the Home Office that it is working on a new costs model which will deliver ‘per item’ figures for new passports, and that the Department will willingly publish that information once it is available.