1.

In this Decision the following terms have the following meanings:

Closed Material

the information provided to the Tribunal by the Council on 20 May 2026;

Commissioner

the Information Commissioner;

Council

Buckinghamshire Council;

Decision Notice

the notice dated 13 November 2025, number IC-384497-S5J0, setting out the decision of the Commissioner in this matter;

DPA

the
Data Protection Act 2018
;

EIR

the Environmental Information Regulations 2004;

FOIA

the
Freedom of Information Act 2000
;

Request

the request submitted by the Appellant dated 25 October 2024;

Requested Information

the information which was within the scope of the Request.

2.

References to a numbered regulation are references to a provision of EIR.

3.

This is an appeal against the decision of the Commissioner as set out in the Decision Notice. The Council declined to be made a party to these proceedings.

4.

The Tribunal received and considered a bundle of documents, and the parties consented to the appeal being decided without a hearing.

5.

The Tribunal is satisfied that this was a fair and just way to decide the appeal.

6.

By directions dated 5 May 2026, I directed the Council to send to the Tribunal and the Commissioner all information which was within scope of the Request and was subject to the Decision Notice, and directed the Appellant to provide copies of correspondence between him and the Bucks Herald which might be relevant to the appeal.

7.

Pursuant to those directions, the Appellant provided further information on 17 May 2026, and the Council provided t
he Closed Material
to the Tribunal and to the Commissioner on 20 May 2026. The Council declined to make an application under rule 14 in relation to the Closed Material, but, noting that disclosure of the Closed Material to the Appellant would defeat the purposes of the appeal, I made an order under rule 14 prohibiting such disclosure on 23 June 2026.

8.

The Commissioner provided a gist of the Closed Material to the Appellant and to the Tribunal on 13 July 2026. On the same day the Appellant responded to the gist of the Closed Material by email, expressing concerns about what the Closed Material might contain, but did not make any further submissions on it.

9.

The Tribunal considered the materials provided and deliberated. On 26 August 2026 the Tribunal provided a draft of this decision to the Commissioner, to seek submissions on whether any part of this decision ought to be closed, and on any typographical or other obvious errors. The Commissioner’s representative replied on the same day, and said that the Commissioner was satisfied that the draft decision did not contain
any inadvertent disclosure of the Requested Information or of the Closed Material, and notified the Tribunal of a small number of drafting errors, which have been corrected. These corrections do not affect the substance of this decision.

10.

The Tribunal notes the requirement, as expressed in
Barrett v Information Commissioner and Financial Ombudsman Service
[2024] UKUT 107 (AAC)
, to minimise the fullest extent possible the disadvantages in the Appellant’s position as not being party to the Closed Material, and in the Tribunal’s view has done so in this case.

Background

11.

Since 2016 the Appellant has been concerned that development works near to property owned by him may have caused damage to the garden of his property by flooding, and that this may be at least in part due to a failure by the developer to comply with its contractual and planning obligations. He considers that neither the Council nor its predecessor local authority have dealt with this matter openly or transparently, and accuses the Council of dishonesty.

12.

In January 2024 the Appellant contacted the Bucks Herald, a local newspaper, to investigate whether the newspaper might be interested in publishing a story on the matter. During 2024 the Appellant was in correspondence with a Bucks Herald journalist regarding this proposal. On the evidence before the Tribunal the Bucks Herald has not to date published any such story.

13.

The Appellant submitted the Request on 25 October 2024, in the following terms:

On or around 4 April 2024 [journalist] of the Bucks Herald contacted the Press Office of Buckinghamshire CC regarding correspondence between myself Peter Hope and the CEO of Bucks CC; specifically the enquiry from [journalist] related to an email dated 3 December 2023 from Peter Hope to the CEO Rachael Shimmin and 6 other members of the Council in regard to the Weston-Grove Housing Development.

Under the Freedom Of Information Act FOI)
[sic]
of 2000 I request a copy of all correspondence in relation to the above exchange of information between [journalist] and the Press Office and or other members of Bucks CC including any exchange of internal correspondence between the Press Office and individual members of the Council.

14.

The Council wrote to the Appellant on 27 October 2024 to seek clarification of the Request, which the Appellant provided the following day.

15.

The Council responded by letter dated 13 November 2024, which it appears may not have been sent to the Appellant until 27 November 2024. The Council refused the Request under s40(1) FOIA, on the basis that the Requested Information was the Appellant’s own personal data. The Council treated the Request as a subject access request under DPA, and purported to provide a response consistent with that treatment, consisting of what it describes as a “summary of events”, documenting correspondence following the journalist’s enquiry.

16.

The Appellant wrote to the Council on 30 November 2024, questioning its withholding of the Requested Information.

17.

The Council responded on 13 December 2024, upholding its refusal, and saying that it should have been made under EIR, as the Requested Information was environmental information. In that letter the Council refused the Request under regulations 5(3) and 13(5) - which the Tribunal assumes ought to have been a reference to regulation 13(5A) - and said that it could neither confirm nor deny whether it held the Requested Information. It did not offer clear reasoning to support its view that it should refuse to confirm or deny whether it held the Requested Information, beyond general statements of its view of the law.

18.

On 18 March 2025 the Appellant requested an internal review of the Council’s refusal.

19.

The Council responded by letter dated 15 April 2025, upholding its refusal on the same basis as its letter of 13 December 2024. In this letter the Council expanded on its reliance on regulation 13(5), and in doing so introduced reference to the personal data of the journalist.

20.

On 23 April 2025 the Appellant complained to the Commissioner.

21.

On 13 November 2025 the Commissioner issued the Decision Notice, deciding that the Requested Information was the Appellant’s own personal data and therefore that the Council was correct to withhold it under regulation 5(3). The Commissioner did not go on to consider regulation 13(5).

22.

The Appellant appealed to the Tribunal.

The Appeal

23.

The Appellant’s notice of appeal includes substantial background information regarding his dealings with the Council, and a response to each paragraph of the Decision Notice.

24.

By s58 FOIA, applied to EIR by regulation 18, appeals against a decision notice of the Commissioner under EIR can only be allowed if the decision notice is not in accordance with the law, or if the Tribunal considers that the Commissioner ought to have exercised his discretion differently. The Appellant’s notice of appeal contains much which does not address these points, but to the extent that it does address them, the Tribunal considers that it raises the following grounds:

a.

That the Commissioner was wrong to consider that the Requested Information was the Appellant’s personal data;

b.

That the Commissioner did not consider the possibility that the Appellant’s personal data had been unlawfully processed by being passed to the Bucks Herald by the Council.

25.

Any other concerns which the Appellant has with the way in which the Commissioner has approached this matter, or with the conduct of the Council, are outside the scope of this appeal.

26.

The Commissioner submits that the Decision Notice was correct, for the reasons set out in it.

27.

The Commissioner has had sight of the Closed Material, and has declined to make any closed submissions, or to amend his open submissions following review of the Closed Material.

Relevant law

28.

Regulation 2 defines terms used in the EIR. It provides that:

“environmental information” [means] any information in written, visual, aural, electronic or any other material form on—

(a)

the state of the elements of the environment, such as air and atmosphere, water, soil, land, landscape and natural sites including wetlands, coastal and marine areas, biological diversity and its components, including genetically modified organisms, and the interaction among these elements;

(b)

factors, such as substances, energy, noise, radiation or waste, including radioactive waste, emissions, discharges and other releases into the environment, affecting or likely to affect the elements of the environment referred to in (a);

(c)

measures (including administrative measures), such as policies, legislation, plans, programmes, environmental agreements, and activities affecting or likely to affect the elements and factors referred to in (a) and (b) as well as measures or activities designed to protect those elements;

[…]

29.

The Decision Notice is made on the basis that the Request is for environmental information and therefore should be considered under EIR. The Tribunal agrees that EIR is correct regime as, taken together, the Requested Information falls within limbs (a), (b) and (c) of the definition of “environmental information” in regulation 2.

30.

Regulation 5 provides as follows:

Duty to make available environmental information on request

5.

—(1) Subject to paragraph (3) and in accordance with paragraphs (2), (4), (5) and (6) and the remaining provisions of this Part and Part 3 of these Regulations, a public authority that holds environmental information shall make it available on request.

(2)

Information shall be made available under paragraph (1) as soon as possible and no later than 20 working days after the date of receipt of the request.

(3)

To the extent that the information requested includes personal data of which the applicant is the data subject, paragraph (1) shall not apply to those personal data.

[...]

31.

Accordingly, by regulation 5(3), information is outside of the scope of EIR if it is the personal data of the requester.

32.

“Personal data” in the EIR has the same meaning as in Parts 5 to 7 DPA. Section 3(2) DPA provides that “personal data” means “any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual” to which Part 2, Part 3 or Part 4 DPA applies.

33.

Information can be personal data without the individual to whom it relates being identifiable from the information itself. In
Farrand v Information Commissioner and London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority
[2014] UKUT 0310 (AAC)
(“
Farrand”
), HHJ Jacobs said that “[t]he important issue is whether the data can be related to a living individual, not whether that person can be identified from any particular part of the data […] suppose the request related to my medical records. Each individual entry would probably contain nothing that would identify me as an individual, but every entry could be related to me if it were set in the context of my records as a whole”.

Evidence and discussion

34.

To determine this appeal the Tribunal must decide the following issues:

a.

is the Requested Information personal data of the Appellant?

b.

if not, is it exempt from the requirement to disclose under EIR for another reason?

35.

The Tribunal has carefully considered all of the evidence submitted in this appeal, including the Closed Material, a gist of which has been provided by the Commissioner to the Appellant as noted above. Much of the evidence relates to the Appellant’s dealings with the Council rather than to the Decision Notice.

36.

The Closed Material is, of course, central to the issues in this appeal.

37.

As described in the gist prepared by the Commissioner, the Closed Material consists of 12 pages of emails, including the initial email from the journalist, and internal emails between Council officers discussing it. It also includes a response to the journalist setting out an approved quotation on behalf of the Council which, the Tribunal notes, was passed on by the journalist to the Appellant on 19 December 2024. The Appellant is concerned that the Council’s correspondence with the journalist may have influenced the Bucks Herald’s decisions about whether to publish a story on the matter, but there is nothing in the Closed Material which is suggestive of any attempt by the Council to do so.

38.

The emails in the Closed Material document discussions about how to respond to the journalist’s enquiry. These discussions, therefore, relate to the Appellant, his correspondence with the Council and the circumstances which give rise to it. If and to the extent that any individual passages within the correspondence can be said not to relate to these matters, they are not within the scope of the Request.

39.

As set out above, personal data is data relating to an identifiable living individual, but that individual need not be identifiable from every part of the information for it to qualify.

40.

The Tribunal notes from the Appellant’s grounds of appeal that he accepts that the information relates to him – in particular from his response to paragraph 14 of the Decision Notice, in which he says:

the information requested was discussions between the Bucks Herald and the Council based on information provided by me to the Bucks Herald about the Council; by default I am identifiable having given information to both the parties.

41.

Given the nature of the Requested Information, in the context of the Request, the Tribunal concludes that it is personal data of the Appellant, and therefore falls within regulation 5(3).

42.

The Tribunal has considered whether the Commissioner was correct not to consider in the Decision Notice the issue of whether the Council was correct to apply regulation 13(5), and has concluded that the Commissioner’s approach was not incorrect. Having concluded that the Requested Information was personal data of the requester, it fell outside the scope of EIR and it was not necessary for the Commissioner to consider further application of the regulations.

Conclusion and decision

43.

For the reasons set out in this decision the Tribunal concludes that the Decision Notice did not contain an error of law, and that the Appeal should be dismissed.

44.

It is remarkable that the Commissioner felt able to make his decision in this matter without sight of the Requested Information, or any engagement with the Council to understand the background or issues. This approach has resulted in several months of delay in determining this appeal and unnecessary cost for the parties and for the Tribunal.

Signed
Date:

Judge Maton
8 September 2026