If a public authority did not hold the information you asked for on the day you asked, does it matter that the authority receives it later — while it is still reviewing its own refusal? On 1 July 2026 the Court of Appeal said no. In Information Commissioner and Health and Safety Executive v O'Hanlon [2026] EWCA Civ 838, the Court allowed the regulators' appeal, overturning the Upper Tribunal and fixing the relevant date for testing whether information is "held" under the environmental information regime.
What the case was about
The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 require a public authority to disclose "environmental information" it holds, subject to limited exceptions. One exception, regulation 12(4)(a), allows a refusal where the authority did not hold the requested information when it received the request. If the requester is unhappy, regulation 11 lets them ask the authority to carry out an internal review.
The Health and Safety Executive refused a request on the basis that it did not hold the relevant information at the time. By the time HSE completed its internal review under regulation 11, however, its ongoing investigation meant it had since received further, potentially relevant material. The question for the courts was whether that later-acquired information had to be brought into account on the review — in other words, whether the "held" test looks at the date of the original request or the date of the review decision. The Upper Tribunal (Judge Citron) found for the requester, Patricia O'Hanlon, on the basis that the later material should have been considered. The Information Commissioner and HSE appealed.
What the Court of Appeal decided
Lord Justice Holgate, with whom Lord Justice Lewison and Lord Justice Dove agreed, allowed the appeal (para 83). The Court held that where a public authority reviews a refusal made under regulation 12(4)(a), the relevant date for assessing whether the information was held — and for applying the linked public interest test in regulation 12(1) — is the date the original request was received, not the date of the regulation 11 decision (para 84).
The Court's reasoning was structural: treating regulation 11 as opening up a rolling assessment of everything an authority has received since the original request would make regulation 12(4)(a) largely meaningless, and would turn internal review into an open-ended process that could be triggered repeatedly as circumstances changed (paras 77–80). That would sit particularly badly with investigating authorities such as HSE, whose files necessarily grow as an investigation continues. The Court left open, for a case where it actually arises, how the public interest test bites on a regulation 12(4)(a) refusal (para 82).
Why it matters
- A fixed reference point for "held". Public authorities handling environmental information requests — and internal reviews of refusals — now have clear appellate authority that the request date, not the review date, governs whether information was held.
- Good news for investigating regulators. Bodies like HSE that accumulate material during live investigations do not face a continuing, self-updating disclosure obligation every time they revisit a request under regulation 11.
- Requesters need to ask again. If relevant information only comes into existence, or into an authority's hands, after a request is made, the Court's answer is a fresh request — not an expectation that the original review will catch it.
Explore the underlying law on Search the Law: the Environmental Information Regulations and "held" information · internal review under regulation 11.
Read the full judgment: Information Commissioner and Health and Safety Executive v O'Hanlon [2026] EWCA Civ 838 (The National Archives).