Regulation 10(4)(b): Manifestly unreasonable requests

When a request for environmental information is considered manifestly unreasonable.

Manifestly unreasonable requests#

Regulation 10(4)(b) of the EIR(S) allows an authority to refuse your request if it is manifestly unreasonable. The word “manifestly” matters. The request must be obviously and clearly unreasonable - not just inconvenient or resource-intensive.

In plain terms#

The authority is saying your request is either so burdensome that dealing with it would be unreasonable, or that it lacks any serious purpose. This is the EIR(S) equivalent of the vexatious request and excessive cost provisions in FOISA, rolled into one.

You ask SEPA for every internal email mentioning water quality in Scotland over the past ten years. SEPA argues that locating, reviewing and redacting the volume of material would divert staff from their regulatory functions for months. The request might be manifestly unreasonable because of the burden - but narrowing it to a specific river, time period, or type of document could make it manageable.

The legal detail#

Regulation 10(4)(b) says an authority can refuse to make environmental information available to the extent that the request for information is manifestly unreasonable. The EIR(S) do not define “manifestly unreasonable.” Courts have found - including in Beggs v Scottish Information Commissioner [2018] - that the question of whether a request is manifestly unreasonable under the EIR(S) has, to all intents and purposes, the same meaning as whether a request is vexatious under FOISA.

The authority does not need to show that disclosure of the information would cause specific harm. But it must show that the request itself is manifestly unreasonable.

Unlike FOISA, the EIR(S) have no cost limit for responding to requests. An authority cannot refuse solely because the cost would exceed a fixed threshold. Cost and burden are factors in the wider assessment, not standalone grounds for refusal.

The public interest test#

Even where a request is manifestly unreasonable, the authority must still apply the public interest test. This is a real difference from FOISA’s vexatious provision in section 14, where no public interest test applies. Under the EIR(S), there will be cases where the information is so important that the public interest in disclosure outweighs the burden of dealing with the request.

The authority must apply the presumption in favour of disclosure under regulation 10(2). See What can they refuse? for more on the public interest test.

How it’s used in practice#

The Commissioner considers a range of factors when deciding whether a request is manifestly unreasonable. No single factor is decisive:

Significant burden: Would complying divert a disproportionate share of the authority’s resources from its other functions? The authority should assess the impact across the whole organisation, not just the team handling the request.
Serious purpose or value: Does the request have a genuine purpose? Requesters are not obliged to explain why they want the information, but a request so obviously lacking in serious purpose that it can only be seen as unreasonable can be refused.
Disruption or annoyance: Is the request designed to cause disruption rather than to obtain information? The authority must focus on the request, not the requester - a person’s history of refused requests doesn’t automatically make the next one unreasonable.
Pattern of behaviour: Where a request is the latest in a long series, the authority can consider the cumulative burden. But a large number of requests is not inherently unreasonable - journalists and campaigners make many requests for good reason.

The Commissioner also looks at whether the authority’s own actions contributed to the situation. If the authority gave partial, ambiguous, or inconsistent responses to earlier requests, prompting further questions, the Commissioner is less likely to accept that the requests are manifestly unreasonable.

Authorities must consider their duty to provide advice and assistance under regulation 9. Before refusing a request as manifestly unreasonable, they should contact you to see whether it can be narrowed or refined. If the authority offered help and you refused to engage, that weighs against you. If the authority never offered, that weighs against the authority.

How to challenge it#

If they’re citing burden, offer to narrow the request. Specify a shorter time period, a smaller set of documents, or a particular topic. This removes the authority’s main argument.

If they’re calling it vexatious, challenge whether the request itself genuinely lacks serious purpose. The Commissioner assesses the request, not the requester. A request cannot be judged manifestly unreasonable simply because the requester has made other requests that were.

Check whether they offered to help you refine the request. If they didn’t, say so. The Commissioner expects authorities to engage before reaching for this exception.

See What to do if refused for the full process.

You can also use our interactive challenge tool for this exception to work through these questions step by step and draft a review request.

Good to know: The authority can extend the deadline from 20 to 40 working days under regulation 7 if the volume and complexity of the information requested make it impracticable to respond within 20 working days. If the authority jumped straight to “manifestly unreasonable” without first using the extended deadline, that may suggest the exception was applied too readily. Campaigning to further legitimate concerns is acceptable practice in a democratic society - authorities should not treat a request as manifestly unreasonable simply because it forms part of a campaign.