Dear South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council,

1. Request for internal review

Please treat this as a request for an internal review of South Tyneside Council’s decision dated 11 February 2026 to reject my FOI request of 8 February 2026 (“Retention periods and disposal controls for pupil records, SEND, exclusions and EOTAS”) as “invalid” on the basis that it was allegedly made under a pseudonym.

I do not accept that this request is invalid under section 8 FOIA, and I am asking the Council to review and overturn that decision.

2. Section 8 FOIA and “name by which I am known”

Section 8(1)(b) FOIA requires that a written request:

- is in writing;
- states the name of the applicant; and
- provides an address for correspondence.

My request meets those requirements. The name used is a real name, and it is a name by which I am known in public, including in the context of FOI requests that have been reported in the regional press.

The ICO’s guidance on section 8 is clear that:

- The test for validity is low and most written requests will be valid.
- A requester may use any name by which they are “known”, including initials plus surname or a preferred name.
- Authorities should ordinarily accept the name given at face value, unless it is clearly an obvious pseudonym or there is a specific and legitimate need to identify the requester (for example, for section 12 cost aggregation or section 14).

You plainly know who you are dealing with, which means the “reasonable indication of identity” test is satisfied.

3. Evidence that this is a public, non-fictitious name

You assert that the request is under a “pseudonym” but provide no evidence that the name is fictitious. In contrast, there is clear public evidence that this is a name by which I am known and which public bodies have accepted as such in FOI contexts.

In particular:

- South West Durham News, “Mayor’s Japan trip cost”, 9 January 2026  
  https://swd.news/mayors-japan-trip-cost/  

This article reproduces a FOI response from the North East Combined Authority (NECA) and states:  

“NECA’s response to the FOI request from member of the public Jamie Halliday said that all flights were in either premium economy or economy class …”

In other words, NECA has itself described me in a formal FOI response as “member of the public Jamie Halliday”.

- The Chronicle (PressReader), 22 December 2025  
  https://www.pressreader.com/uk/the-chronicle-9c96/20251222/281530822370328  

- The Northern Echo, “North East mayor Kim McGuinness defends £16,000 Japan visit”  
  https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/news/25713574.north-east-mayor-kim-mcguinness-defends-16-000-japan-visit/  

These pieces confirm that this is not an invented alias for the purposes of annoying South Tyneside Council. It is a name used for FOI work, clearly recognised by NECA, and reported by several newspapers.

That is more than enough to meet the “real name” requirement in section 8 as interpreted by the ICO.

4. Your own previous acceptance of the same name

South Tyneside Council has already treated the same name as valid and responded to FOI requests under it, for example:

- “PCN volumes and income by area and contravention code”  
  https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/pcn_volumes_and_income_by_area_a  

- “Police vehicle collision – Dean Road and surrounding area”  
  https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/police_vehicle_collision_dean_ro  

Both of these requests were submitted via WhatDoTheyKnow using the same name and both were accepted and answered in good faith. At no point did the Council suggest that they were invalid under section 8 FOIA.

You have also processed FOI 25.1122 under this name to the point of a substantive response before seeking retrospectively to reframe it as “invalid” once you were unhappy with the internal review.

Taken together with the media examples above, this shows that the name is treated as perfectly acceptable until the subject matter of the request becomes uncomfortable. Only then does “pseudonym” suddenly appear as a barrier. That is not a lawful or consistent application of section 8.

FOI rights are applicant blind. They are not conditional on whether the authority likes the requester, their website, or the topics they raise.

5. Use of more than one name is not a breach of section 8

Your letter implies that, because you have seen me use another name in other contexts, the name on this request must therefore be a pseudonym.

That is simply not how section 8 works. Many people legitimately use more than one name, for example:

- a middle name in some settings and a first name in others;
- a professional or pen name;
- a former name alongside a current legal name after a change.

The ICO’s guidance allows any name by which a requester is “known”. It does not require a single permanent identity label and it does not give public authorities a free hand to refuse requests whenever they discover that a requester sometimes uses a different form of their name elsewhere.

If you had any genuine concern about this particular expression of my name, the proportionate response would have been to ask a simple clarification question. You did not do that. You simply declared the request invalid and refused to process it.

6. Threats to demand ID for future requests

You state:

“For any further requests you submit to the council, they must be done under your real name or they will be invalid. If we have reason to believe that a different pseudonym is being used, we may request proof of identification before providing a response.”

The ICO’s published position is that identity checks should be the exception, not the norm, and only arise in limited circumstances, for example where the authority needs to:

- aggregate costs for section 12 across multiple requests; or
- assess whether there is a pattern of vexatious or repeated requests under section 14.

You have not suggested that any of those circumstances apply here. Instead, you are proposing to run a special identity verification regime for one requester, simply because you dislike the scrutiny.

That approach is not compatible with FOIA or with the ICO’s guidance. It also has a chilling effect on the exercise of information rights.

7. Outcome requested

In light of the above, I ask the reviewing officer to:

- Uphold this internal review, confirm that my request of 8 February 2026 is a valid request under section 8 FOIA, and instruct the Information and Feedback Team to process it in the normal way, providing a substantive response within 20 working days of the date of your internal review decision,

or, if you refuse to do so,

- Confirm, with reasons, that the Council maintains its position that the request is invalid, so that I can place your final position and the evidence above before the Information Commissioner.

I look forward to your prompt response to this internal review.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/retention_periods_and_disposal_c_5

Yours faithfully,

Jamie Halliday