The Freedom of Information Act 2000 Fees Order

What can I charge for under FOI?

Complying with Section 1 (1) of the Act:

To tell applicant if you hold the information requested in writing

To communicate the information (if held) to the applicant

Basic Rules

Upon receiving a request, if the cost of complying with the request will be:-

Below the appropriate limit (£450 for public bodies) – we cannot charge anything other than disbursements.

If the charge for disbursements is less then £10, the request will be progressed free of charge

Over the appropriate limit – we don’t have to comply if however, we choose to comply then we can only charge the Regulation 4* costs plus Disbursements.

Appropriate Limit

Central Government £600 and others (including Local Government) £450

Disbursements:

Complying with the applicants request for information in a particular format (e.g. summary, inspection, copy)

Reproducing the document

Postage and other forms of transmission e.g. fax

Working out if you’re under the Appropriate Limit

Upon receiving the request, estimate how long it’s going to take you to do any or all of the following (Regulation 4 costs) and cost the time at £25.00 per hour:

Determining whether you hold the information

Locating the information or a document which may contain the information

Retrieving the information, or a document, which may contain the information

Extracting the information from a document containing it

You cannot charge for the time taken by staff to inform the applicant that information is or is not held or for them to communicate it to them.

Consultative or Campaign Requests:

These are: Two or more requests made by one person or different persons in concert or in pursuance of a campaign

The Rule: When calculating whether the Appropriate Limit has/may be reached in complying with any one request, you aggregate the cost of complying with all of them. However, there must be two or more requests that relate to the same or similar information and be received within any sixty consecutive working day period.

*Requests costing more than the appropriate limit

If requests would cost more that the appropriate limit to answer, the public authority is not obliged under Section 1 of the Act to answer it. However, in deciding how to handle the request, the authority must take into account Section 16 of the Act (1) which requires the authority to “provide advice and assistance, so far as it would reasonable to expect the authority to do so, to persons who propose to make, or have made requests for information to it”.