Imperial College London’s FOIA Evasion: A Masterclass in Obstruction

The request: legal spending and public accountability

Imperial College London is a major public institution. Where public funds are spent on legal services, especially in employment, grievance or research-misconduct contexts, there is a legitimate public interest in understanding the scale and purpose of that expenditure.

As requester, I sought to understand how Imperial allocates funds for legal services, particularly in cases involving Employment Tribunals, staff grievances and research misconduct. The issue is not curiosity for its own sake. It is whether public money is being used proportionately, transparently and accountably in disputes involving staff, whistleblowers or institutional governance.

The shifting sands of Imperial’s response

The supplied draft states that Imperial initially characterised the request as vexatious, including an apparent suggestion that the requester was connected to claimants in tribunal cases. The draft further states that the ICO rejected that position in Decision Notice IC-331009-H9W2.

Following that rejection, Imperial is said to have relied on section 12 of FOIA, arguing that compliance would exceed the applicable cost limit of 18 hours. A public authority is entitled to rely on section 12 where the statutory threshold is met. The difficulty is whether the estimate has been properly evidenced.

Section 12 FOIA: assertion is not enough

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to refuse a request where the cost of compliance would exceed the appropriate limit. In practical terms, for many public authorities this is commonly expressed as an 18-hour threshold.

The concern raised by the draft is that Imperial has not provided a sufficiently detailed explanation of how it reached its estimate. A section 12 refusal should be based on a reasonable estimate, not a bare assertion of difficulty.

The draft refers to ICO decision FS50713699 as authority for the proposition that vague assertions of administrative burden are insufficient and that public authorities must provide a meaningful cost analysis. That reference should be checked before publication.

Financial transparency or institutional amnesia?

The draft challenges Imperial’s position that legal expenditure data would require extensive invoice trawling. It says the request covered 2021–2024, not a 20-year period. If that is correct, the scope of the search and the time estimate require careful scrutiny.

There are two broad possibilities. Either Imperial maintains structured oversight of legal expenditure, in which case it should be able to identify at least categories of spending. Or it does not maintain such oversight, which would itself raise governance questions for a publicly funded institution.

Failure to provide meaningful assistance

Section 16 FOIA requires public authorities to provide advice and assistance to requesters, so far as it would be reasonable to do so. That duty matters particularly where an authority relies on section 12. The requester should be helped to refine the request into a form that can be answered.

The supplied draft says Imperial suggested asking instead for generic expenditure on all employee-relations matters. That may not answer the original public-interest concern, which is specifically legal spending in litigation, grievance and research-misconduct contexts.

The internal review issue

The draft criticises Imperial’s refusal to conduct an internal review. Internal review is an important safeguard in FOIA practice because it allows a public authority to reconsider whether the exemption has been properly applied and whether its reasoning is adequate.

The article refers to the FOIA Code of Practice 2018, section 5.3, as stating that every public authority should have a review process. That reference should be verified before publication. If Imperial refused review outright, that should be explained carefully against the precise wording of its correspondence.

The ICO must scrutinise the refusal

The supplied draft calls for regulatory intervention by the ICO. The strongest formulation is that the ICO should examine whether Imperial’s section 12 reliance is adequately evidenced, whether section 16 assistance was meaningful, and whether the handling of the request indicates a wider compliance concern.

Conclusion: what is Imperial trying to avoid disclosing?

Imperial’s resistance to disclosure raises a serious public-interest question. The issue is not whether the institution is entitled to protect itself from genuinely excessive FOIA burdens. It is whether it has properly justified its refusal and meaningfully assisted the requester to obtain a proportionate version of the information.

The public has a legitimate interest in understanding how a major institution spends money on legal disputes, especially where those disputes may involve staff grievances, Employment Tribunals, whistleblowing concerns or research-misconduct issues.

I pursued this FOIA request because transparency matters. Public institutions should not be able to obscure legal expenditure through shifting procedural grounds. The question remains: why is Imperial so reluctant to provide a clear account of its legal spending?