St Antony's College, Oxford

The complainant requested information regarding legal agreements and associated documents concerning a particular programme of studies. The College initially cited section 12(1) (cost of compliance) of FOIA due to the size of the request and after a refined request was received, it provided redacted information in scope advising that it had not managed to locate some information, therefore information was not held for that part of the request (section 1(1)(a)). It cited an unreasonable burden (section 14 (vexatious) of FOIA) was being placed on the College by the continued requests. 
The College has dealt with the part of the request for the complainant’s own personal information as a Subject Access Request (SAR) separately. This has been raised as a separate complaint with the ICO.
The Commissioner’s decision is that, on the balance of probabilities, the College does not hold further information in scope of the request, and correctly cited section 12 due to the time required to deal with the original request. Under section 16 of FOIA the College provided adequate advice and assistance in relation to the request. 
The Commissioner considers that: “an unreasonable burden on the resources” (section 14 of FOIA) was inappropriately stated by the College in the circumstances of the ongoing concern.
No steps are required as a result of this decision.