Civil appeals to the Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court is the final court of appeal in the UK for civil cases. It hears cases of the greatest public or constitutional importance and plays an important role in the development of United Kingdom law. It hears appeals on arguable points of law from the civil division of the Court of Appeal and, in some very limited cases, the High Court.

The Supreme Court has its own set of rules, the Supreme Court Rules (referred to in this overview as 'SCR') and its own set of Practice Directions (referred to in this overview as ‘SCR PDs’). These are entirely separate to the Civil Procedure Rules, which govern procedure in the County Courts, High Court and Court of Appeal.

The SCR were enacted by the Supreme Court Rules 2024, SI 2024/949, which revoke and replace the Supreme Court Rules 2009 (referred to in this Practice Note as ‘old SCR’). For an introduction to the Supreme Court Rules 2024, see Practice Note: Guide to the Supreme Court Rules 2024.

The Supreme Court has a website on which much information is available about its procedures

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Information Law analysis: This claim relates to the scope of production and the application of the exemptions to production of personal data in responding fully to a subject access request. The Claimant, Thomas Cole (Cole), who was a student at the Defendant school, Marlborough College (the College), submitted a data subject access request (DSAR) under Article 15 of the United Kingdom General Data Protection Regulation, Assimilated Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (the UK GDPR) after he was removed from the school following his involvement in a physical altercation with another student. In this half-day case management hearing, Mr Justice Nicklin assessed whether the College was entitled to withhold, in whole or part, documents containing Cole’s personal data, rather than providing the material for inspection ahead of a two-day trial on the data protection claim expected to start in mid-2025. The court held that the College was entitled to withhold some documents (containing Cole’s personal data) on the grounds of the exemption in paragraph 16 of Schedule 2, Part 3 to the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA 2018). In short, this exemption provides that a controller is not obliged to disclose information to a data subject where doing so involves disclosing information that relates to another individual who can be identified from that information, whether as the source of information or as the subject of such information. Written by Robyn Bond, associate at Ropes & Gray International LLP.

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