On 17 November 2009, the Supreme Court will hear the Information Commissioner’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Office of Communications v Information Commissioner [2009] EWCA Civ 90 (Ofcom). In Ofcom, the Court of Appeal held that, when multiple exceptions were engaged in respect of particular information, the public interest test provided for under regulation 12(1)(b) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 would operate so as to entitle the public authority to aggregate all the different public interest factors relating to all applicable exceptions in a single, compendious public interest balancing exercise. This judgment was controversial, not least because it represented a departure from the well-established approach of tailoring public interest considerations to the individual exception in issue. Notably, in a recent Information Tribunal decision, the Tribunal highlighted some of the practical difficulties posed by the adoption of the aggregate approach to the public interest test (South Gloucestershire v Information Commissioner (EA/2009/0032), §§48-52). 11KBW’s Clive Lewis and Akhlaq Choudhury will be appearing on behalf of the Commissioner in the Supreme Court.