The request can be fairly categorised as obsessive or manifestly unreasonable

The request can be fairly categorised as obsessive or manifestly unreasonable


34. In the Commissioner’s view, the test to apply here is one of reasonableness. In other words, would a reasonable person describe the request(s) as obsessive or manifestly unreasonable? The Commissioner’s guidance suggests that;
‘It will be easier to identify these requests when there has been frequent previous contact with the requester or the request forms part of a pattern, for instance when the same individual submits successive requests for information. Although these requests may not be repeated in the sense that they are requests for the same information, taken together they may form evidence of a pattern of obsessive requests so that an authority may reasonably regard the most recent as vexatious.’
35. The Commissioner is of the view that the number of requests which were addressed to different members of staff at the MHRA along with the complainant’s tendency to repeat and build upon requests in response to replies from the MHRA during the relevant period demonstrate that the complainant was behaving in an obsessive manner. There was no suggestion that these requests would signal the end of this matter, on the contrary, the complainant’s comments that he regards his correspondence with the MHRA as “dialogue, rather than
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simple one-off requests for information” supported the view that the complainant considers it within his right to continue to make as many requests as he likes in order to continue his dialogue with the MHRA, regardless of the effect this may have on the MHRA in terms of time, expense and distraction.