Investigating Human Rights & Data Protection Violations by FOI.
Resistance, interference & bias in the Highland Council.
FOI/EIR Interference at The Highland Council
Some officers inside the Highland Council appear to be feeling uncomfortable about “The Audit”…
A recent FOI (EIR) request I sent was partially responded to and the other parts were deemed “manifestly unreasonable”.
EIR Guidance from The Scottish Information Commissioner’s Office on Regulation 10(4)(b): Manifestly unreasonable requests (Exception Briefing) states…
“The term “manifestly unreasonable” must be applied to the request, NOT the requester”
However… incidentally, I also received another subject access request disclosure last week from the Highland Council that just happened to be running concurrently with these FOI requests which captured some of the “attitude” by some officers inside the Council towards my requests.
The Highland Council passed this particular request onto their Principal Planning Enforcement Officer, Craig Wilson.. and the 1st question he asks?
Who is the requester❓
The request & emails between staff about it is here. 👇
What am I investigating with this request❓
🚨 Extremely serious breaches of human rights & data protection law I’ve experienced & further uncovered in my court case, INV-SM2-24, reports from other members of the public & also from publicly available appeal documentation from Directorate of Planning & Environmental Appeals (DPEA).
The Council routinely “invisibly process” people's data which is unlawful under the GDPR. In essence, a complaint can be made to the planning department about you and the Council do not notify the subject of the complaint sometimes for years.. as in my case.
The planning team also conduct “site visits” that I now call “spy visits” which are human rights breaches that fall foul of the entry rights allowed in the Town & Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1997.
I’m not the only one investigating Highland Council’s planning enforcement team. See the article about “secret enforcement cases” that appeared in the media. 👇
The Court of Session wasn’t too impressed with Highland Council’s planning department either when they lost the Academy St. judicial review in 2024 where the court ruled they made unlawful decisions in a planning consultation.👇
You can read the full decision of Lord Sandison at the link in the below caption.
The Highland Council spent nearly £120,000 alone just on legal expenses and paying the successful parties legal costs in that case. An inordinate total amount of money and Council resources were wasted on that botched consultation & after all was said and done… not a single councillor or senior Council official called for a review of practices in Highland Council's planning department.
Therefore, the information I have requested is massively in the public interest & in fact, it is the councillors & senior officers at the Highland Council who should be the ones auditing their practices but, refuse to do so.
FOI are meant to be “Applicant Blind”?
Having chats about painting the requester (me) as “vexatious” & marking the request, “manifestly unreasonable”.
⚠️ Yet, I know how their IDOX data base works. They do not need to manually review each case. A few clicks of a button gives the event log for each case. It is also notable the information that they do not want to disclose. 👁️
A bit rich considering it is myself that is the one that has an actual judicial finding against the Highland Council for “manifestly unreasonable behaviour” & proceeding with a defence but, not in good faith as to its merits.👇
Not only that.. but, the same planning enforcement officer in the emails was directly involved in some of the very behaviour that was deemed “manifestly unreasonable” by the court.
He clearly dislikes that I am auditing his department - therefore, it's questionable whether he should even be dealing with these FOI/EIR requests.
Decision Notice Issued by the Scottish Information Commissioner
Last week, I was also issued a decision notice by SICO in relation to another FOI about subject access request statistics at the Highland Council. The Council completely failed to respond at all to this request and now have until 13 March 2026 to do so.💀
👉 Read Decision Notice 015/2026.