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FOIwiki - helping you unlock the secrets of UK Freedom of Information laws

Introduction

FOIwiki is designed to help you ensure your Freedom of Information requests are fairly treated by Public Authorities. Often the Authority will misapply an Exemption to your request and not supply the information you're after. This site allows you to check the law and official guidance all in one place.

The Freedom of Information laws all roughly follow the same process, although there are some subtle differences:

  1. you make an information request to a public authority
  2. the authority can ask you to clarify this
  3. under certain circumstances, the authority may ask you to pay a fee to cover printing and postage or other costs
  4. the authority will either send you the information you ask or will refuse to send it, claiming one or more exemptions that are allowed to them under the laws.
  5. for refusals, you can make an appeal to the authority to get them to reconsider the exemptions
  6. if this is still unsuccessful, you can appeal to the Information Commissioner (or the Scottish Information Commissioner)
  7. if this is still unsuccessful, you can appeal to the Information Tribunal (or the Court of Session for Scotland's FOI laws)

Legislation

The following sections are the various laws that apply to FOI requests. Each section contains more details on process and exemption guidance:

England, Wales & Northern Ireland:

Scotland

Joint North/South Bodies (Northern Ireland / Republic of Ireland)

Official guidance

links to DCA, ICO, IT

Make a FOI request

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com


Copyrights

Some material published on this site is Crown Copyright, reproduced under the terms of the Click-Use Licence C2008001460. Source of this material is:

  • Department of Constitutional Affairs
  • Information Commissioners Office.