More notes on Freedom of Information. This time we had the pleasure of Brian's expertise.
The essence of FOI: The public have a legal right of access to any piece of of information held by public authorities because they pay their taxes.
100,000 FOI requests are submitted every year. It costs around £34m to answer that number.
Anybody can send an FOI request. In fact, only 12% are sent by journalists.
EXAMPLE: Kingsnorth Climate Protest (August 2008)
- Initial statement: 70 police injured
- After FOI request: 12 police injured, only 4 seriously
Journalists believe this is the 'golden era' of FOI.
When can they say 'no'?
If it costs more than £600 to find out the information.
(£450 for smaller organisations)
Other exemptions
ABSOLUTE: Security, intelligence, court records etc
QUALIFIED: e.g. - ministerial communication, commercial confidentiality etc.
There are 23 reasons for exemption in total.
Responding time
Body in question must acknowledge request within 20 days.
They are allowed a further 40 days to deal with the information.
Tip
Keep questions simple and to the point.
The essence of FOI: The public have a legal right of access to any piece of of information held by public authorities because they pay their taxes.
100,000 FOI requests are submitted every year. It costs around £34m to answer that number.
Anybody can send an FOI request. In fact, only 12% are sent by journalists.
EXAMPLE: Kingsnorth Climate Protest (August 2008)
- Initial statement: 70 police injured
- After FOI request: 12 police injured, only 4 seriously
Journalists believe this is the 'golden era' of FOI.
When can they say 'no'?
If it costs more than £600 to find out the information.
(£450 for smaller organisations)
Other exemptions
ABSOLUTE: Security, intelligence, court records etc
QUALIFIED: e.g. - ministerial communication, commercial confidentiality etc.
There are 23 reasons for exemption in total.
Responding time
Body in question must acknowledge request within 20 days.
They are allowed a further 40 days to deal with the information.
Tip
Keep questions simple and to the point.
No comments:
Post a Comment