Main Page

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. you wait for them to answer back within a certain time period
5. 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.
6. for refusals, you can make an appeal to the authority to get them to reconsider the exemptions
7. if this is still unsuccessful, you can apply to the Information Commissioner (or the Scottish Information Commissioner) for a decision on the matter
8. if this is still unsuccessful, you can appeal to the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights) (or the Court of Session for Scotland's FOI laws)

Legislation

Main article: access to information laws

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:

• Freedom of Information Act 2000
• Environmental Information Regulations 2004
• Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985

Scotland

• Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002
• Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004

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

• North/South Bodies Freedom of Information Code of Practice

Official guidance

• Information Commissioner Document Library: http://www.ico.gov.uk/tools_and_resources/document_library/freedom_of_information.aspx
• Scottish Information Commissioner guidance: http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/Law/FOISA-EIRsGuidance/Briefings.asp
• Ministry of Justice: Guidance for Public Authorities - http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/freedom-of-information.htm
• Defra Guidance on EIRs: http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/opengov/eir/

Make a FOI request

WhatDoTheyKnow is an easy-to-use website that allows you to make FOI requests to over 3,600 public authorities. All correspondence, including any information released by the public authority is automatically published on the website, for you to find and read.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com

WhatDoTheyKnow.com currently accounts for around 10% of all FOI requests made in the UK[1]