Spiropoulos v The Information Commissioner: [2025] UKUT 285 (AAC)
Upper Tribunal Administrative Appeals Chamber decision by Judge Citron on 18 August 2025.
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Judicial Summary
The First-tier Tribunal dismissed the appellant’s appeal because it agreed with the Information Commissioner that the public authority did not hold the requested information. That was based on evidence in correspondence from the public authority to the Information Commissioner. The appellant himself (who, unlike the public authority, gave oral evidence at the First-tier Tribunal hearing) provided evidence that the requested information was in a record held by the public authority. The First-tier Tribunal did not explain, in terms, why it preferred the public authority’s evidence (on the central point in the case) over the appellant’s. The Upper Tribunal decides that the reasons could be inferred from the First-tier Tribunal decision as a whole (as the First-tier Tribunal decision was critical of the appellant’s evidence), and so there was no material error of law. It would have been good practice, however, for the First-tier Tribunal decision to have identified the conflict in the evidence before it (on the central point in the case) and to have expressly given reasons, no doubt brief, for preferring one piece of evidence over another. The appeal was dismissed as there was no material error of law.