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There must be some doubt as to whether the Commissioner has adequately considered, or has misdirected himself on, certain matters.
Mr Spoonseeker has referred to and dealt with the point about the sheer weight of requests but I think there is another point.
The Guidance apparently states that "if a public authority has reason to believe that several different requesters are acting in concert as part of a campaign to disrupt the organisation by virtue of the sheer weight of FOIA requests being submitted......"
This guidance appears to be primarily, and quite reasonably, directed at and applicable to an entirely different type of campaign where the object is to bring about the disruption of the organisation, rather than a bona fide attempt to obtain information. Has any evidence been presented with the purpose of demonstrating that the requesters intent was disruption of the organisation of QMUL rather than obtaining the information which we believe to be the real object of the request?
Given the Commissioner's acceptance that this particular request on its own would not impose a significant burden, the onus of proof to establish whether the person was acting in concert with others, whose intent was disruption, ought to be significantly higher.
In order to show that the request constituted part of a campaign one might expect it to be necessary to adduce evidence of a campaign predating the request. It seems to me that the examples quoted by QMUL probably were made after the request and in response to the initial refusal. Alternatively one might attempt to show a link to subsequent requests, but as I recall it there was no such attempt.
Big up to the forum member who achieved this. Let's have some more FOI requests please, informed by the same factors that achieved success here - I'm sure there's lots more data which would be...interesting...to have on public view, and indeed the entire dataset should be released in a timely fashion according the MRC guidelines, so there's plenty of potential here. I always thought that FOI requests are our best weapon and we need to play that card much more strongly in all areas, so I look forward to seeing the secrets that disclosure may reveal.
I hope that the complainant will appeal the decision and bring this misquotation to the Commissioner's attention.
Is an appeal still an option ? If so I am willing to testify that my comment, which was also quoted, in no way represents a campaign.