Written by FOI law gives the public a route to test how public authorities use money, make decisions and account for themselves. When a university refuses a request for legal-fee information as vexatious, the question is not simply whether the requester is persistent. It is whether the institution has properly balanced transparency, burden, context and the public interest in scrutiny of legal expenditure.
Publication snapshot
- Core issue: whether a request for legal-fee information was fairly refused as vexatious under section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
- Public-interest focus: transparency about public or publicly connected expenditure on external legal advice, litigation, grievances and misconduct-related matters.
- Practical concern: a broad section 14 refusal can close down scrutiny if it treats similarity, persistence or suspected motive as decisive without properly examining value and burden.
- Route forward: internal review, narrowing where useful, and then complaint to the Information Commissioner if the refusal remains unresolved.
Why this matters
On 23 May 2024, I submitted a Freedom of Information request to Imperial College London. The request sought details of legal fees paid to Farrer & Co for matters including Employment Tribunal cases, staff grievances and research misconduct investigations. The purpose was to examine how the college was using funds on external legal support in matters affecting governance, employment accountability and institutional decision-making.
Imperial’s response, dated 8 June 2024, refused the request under section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 on the basis that it was vexatious. According to my account, the college relied on factors including the similarity of the request to previous correspondence, the perceived burden of producing the information and its assessment that the request lacked sufficient public-interest value.
That matters because legal expenditure by universities is not a private curiosity. Universities subject to FOI obligations hold a position of public importance. They receive public funding, exercise public-facing educational and research functions, and make decisions that affect staff, students, researchers, public trust and institutional governance.
The accountability question: when an FOI request seeks legal-fee information from a public university, the institution should explain why disclosure is unreasonable, not merely why the request is inconvenient, repetitive or uncomfortable.
What was requested
The request was directed at legal fees paid to Farrer & Co across categories of institutional concern: Employment Tribunal cases, staff grievances and research misconduct investigations. Those categories are not incidental. Each can raise questions about governance culture, complaint handling, employment relations, research integrity and the cost of defending institutional decisions.
There may be legitimate limits. Legal privilege, personal data, commercial sensitivity, cost limits and disproportionate burden can all be relevant in an FOI response. But those issues do not automatically convert a request into a vexatious one. Nor do they remove the public-interest value of understanding the scale and pattern of legal spend where the information can be provided at an appropriate level of aggregation.
The strongest form of the request may not require privileged advice, names of individuals, litigation strategy or sensitive case detail. It may be enough to seek annual totals, matter categories, broad fee ranges, dates, budget codes or aggregated expenditure. That distinction matters because a public authority should consider whether a narrower or less intrusive version of the information could address the transparency issue without imposing disproportionate burden.
Legal-fee information connected with employment, grievance and research-misconduct matters.
Imperial refused the request under section 14, treating it as vexatious on the author’s account.
Whether legal spend could have been disclosed in a proportionate, aggregated or narrowed form.
The section 14 issue
Section 14 exists for a reason. Public authorities should not be required to devote disproportionate resources to requests that are obsessive, harassing, grossly burdensome, abusive, manifestly unreasonable or lacking serious purpose or value. FOI law is not intended to be a tool for harassment or endless relitigation of matters already properly dealt with.
But section 14 is also a serious refusal route. It should not be used as a convenient label for requests that are awkward, reputationally sensitive, repetitive in theme or critical of the institution. The proper question is contextual. The authority must examine the value and purpose of the request, the burden it would impose, the wider history and whether the impact of compliance would be unjustified.
In a higher-education context, legal-fee transparency can have serious purpose. A request may be connected to public spending, governance, employment disputes, research integrity, institutional accountability and the use of public or public-linked funds. Even if a requester has a personal history with the institution, that does not automatically remove public-interest value if the request also raises wider accountability issues.
Unsafe framing
“Imperial used section 14 to hide legal spending.”
Safer and stronger framing
“Imperial should be able to show why the burden and context justified a section 14 refusal despite the public-interest value in legal-fee transparency.”
Public interest and burden
The public interest in FOI is not the same as private curiosity. It includes transparency, accountability, good decision-making, integrity, fair treatment and scrutiny of public resources. Those values are directly engaged where a public university spends money on external lawyers in employment, grievance or misconduct-related matters.
At the same time, public interest does not automatically override administrative burden. A broad request covering multiple matters, time periods and internal records may require significant work. The institution is entitled to consider whether compliance would impose an unjustified burden, particularly if the request is wide, repetitive or part of a pattern of escalating correspondence.
The critical point is balance. A public authority should not treat burden and public interest as separate silos. It should ask whether the request can be refined, whether aggregated data can be provided, whether published accounts already answer part of the issue, whether redaction can manage sensitivity, and whether the public-interest value justifies some effort even if full compliance is difficult.
Identify the transparency value
Does the request shed light on public spending, governance, institutional accountability, decision-making or use of external advisers?
Identify the real burden
What records need to be searched, how many systems are involved, and what staff time or redaction work would be required?
Test proportionate disclosure
Could the authority provide totals, date ranges, categories, budget codes or aggregated legal-spend figures without exposing sensitive detail?
Explain the refusal
If section 14 is maintained, the authority should explain the context, burden, history and reasons clearly enough for review and complaint.
Partial disclosure and assistance
A refusal under section 14 should not be the first and only practical answer where a request has public value but is too broad. The authority should consider whether there are alternative approaches. That may include inviting the requester to narrow the request, explaining which parts are burdensome, identifying available published information, or offering a more manageable form of disclosure.
This is where advice and assistance matters. A public body that simply refuses a broad request may be acting within its legal position in some cases, but it loses an opportunity to demonstrate good-faith transparency. In a case about legal-fee information, Imperial could have considered whether aggregated yearly totals, spend by broad category, or a narrower time period would answer the accountability question without requiring detailed case-by-case reconstruction.
The absence of partial disclosure can become part of the dispute. It may suggest that the institution treated the request as a problem to be rejected rather than a transparency issue to be managed. That is particularly sensitive where the requested information concerns legal spending connected with disputes, complaints or misconduct processes.
Reduce the scope
Limit the request by year, matter type, department, invoice category or named external firm.
Avoid sensitive detail
Ask for totals or broad bands rather than privileged advice, individual case narratives or personal data.
Challenge the refusal
Request internal review focused on public interest, burden, section 14 reasoning and whether assistance was properly considered.
Route forward
The next step is not to treat the refusal as the final word. The proper route is to ask for an internal review, focusing on the specific weaknesses in the section 14 reasoning. That review should address the public-interest value in legal-fee transparency, the distinction between personal motive and public benefit, whether the request was capable of being narrowed, and whether the burden analysis was evidenced rather than asserted.
If the internal review maintains the refusal, the matter can be taken to the Information Commissioner. The complaint should be structured around the legal test, not only the requester’s disagreement with the outcome. It should identify the original request, the refusal notice, the internal review, the public-interest value, the proposed narrowing options and why section 14 was arguably misapplied.
This case also highlights a broader issue for higher education. Universities should not wait for contested FOI requests before explaining their legal spending. Proactive publication of aggregated external legal costs, broken down by broad category where appropriate, would reduce suspicion, reduce request volume and improve public confidence.
Publish legal-spend totals
Annual aggregated legal-fee data would reduce the need for repeated FOI requests.
Record matter categories
Consistent coding of employment, governance, research and student-related legal spend would improve transparency.
Use refinement before refusal
Where a request is too broad, institutions should explain how it could be narrowed before relying on the harshest refusal route.
Explain section 14 decisions
Vexatious-request refusals should show the real burden, context and balancing exercise, not only assert it.
Source anchors
These source anchors help separate the FOI framework from the author’s case-specific account and public-interest criticism.
- ICO: Dealing with vexatious requests under section 14
- ICO: The public interest test
- ICO: Section 16 — advice and assistance
- Freedom of Information Act 2000, section 14
- Freedom of Information Act 2000, section 16
- Dransfield v Information Commissioner & Devon County Council [2015] EWCA Civ 454
- Kennedy v Charity Commission [2014] UKSC 20
Closing point
Legal-fee transparency in higher education is not a niche issue. It goes to how universities manage disputes, defend decisions, respond to staff concerns, handle misconduct processes and use resources connected to public functions.
Section 14 should remain available for genuinely vexatious requests. But it should not become a shortcut for avoiding difficult questions about legal expenditure. Where a request has identifiable public-interest value, a university should explain the burden, consider narrowing, and show why refusal is justified.
The public-confidence test is simple. If a university spends substantial sums on external lawyers in matters of governance, employment or research integrity, the public should be able to ask what is being spent, at least at an aggregated and proportionate level. Transparency should be managed carefully, not refused reflexively.
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