Mark Armstrong v The Information Commissioner: [2026] UKUT 269 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision of Judge Stout on 15 July 2026.
Read the full decision in .
Judicial Summary
The Information Commissioner (IC) acted procedurally unfairly in failing to give the applicant an opportunity to comment on the public authority’s reliance on a new exemption in the course of the IC’s investigation of the applicant’s complaint under section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA). However, the First-tier Tribunal had not arguably erred in holding that it did not have jurisdiction to uphold an appeal because of that procedural error. There was no arguable breach of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in those circumstances because the First-tier Tribunal itself was the independent and impartial tribunal with full jurisdiction to determine whether the applicant’s civil right to information under section 1 of FOIA had been infringed. Nor had the First-tier Tribunal arguably erred in its application of the public interest test in section 2(2)(b) of FOIA.