On 11 September 2025 the Upper Tribunal (UTJ Citron) handed down judgment in Spiropoulos v Information Commissioner [2025] UKUT 285 (AAC), an important appeal concerning the reasoning required in a first instance tribunal judgment.
It is well-established that a judgment must give sufficient reasons (i) to enable the parties to understand why they have won or lost, and (ii) to enable an appellate body to determine if it contains any error of law. Judgments must also set out sufficient factual findings to support their conclusions.
The Appellant in Spiropoulos had given written and oral evidence to the First-tier Tribunal that he had seen the information that was the subject of his Freedom of Information request (various information logs in a court file) when visiting the court building. However there also was a written witness statement, provided by the Ministry of Justice, explaining that the information was not there and that he must be mistaken.
The FtT found that the information in question was not contained in the court file. But it did not say whether, and if so why, it had rejected the Appellant’s evidence on this.
At the substantive appeal the UT held that, although the FtT had not expressly resolved the key conflict in the evidence before it, its answer could be inferred from the decision as a whole. That was sufficient for the appeal to be dismissed.
The Upper Tribunal also confirmed that in future it would be best practice for the FtT to expressly identify, and then resolve, conflicts in evidence.
Oliver Jackson acted for the successful respondent to the appeal, the Information Commissioner (who did not appear at first instance). The judgment is available here.
