Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests

Environmental Information Regulations (EIR)

Under EIR:

• in some circumstances we can charge a fee for making the information available
• any charge should be ‘reasonable’ and should not exceed the costs we incur in making the information available
• it may cover the cost of the paper for photocopying or printing the information and a covering letter and the cost of postage
• it may also include the cost of staff time in identifying, locating or retrieving the information from storage

Information free of charge

There is no charge for:

• information contained in the public registers we hold
• lists of information
• published data sets
• information published in our disclosure log
• examining information at the council's offices

We won't charge for the first £450 worth of council officer time spent on:

• working out whether we hold the information
• locating and retrieving the information
• extracting the information including editing

What we will charge for

Where we estimate that search and collation time will exceed £450, we will discuss the requirements with you and try to reduce the costs to within that limit. If this is not possible we will consider each request individually and either:

• refuse to answer the request
• apply a charge of £25 per hour of officer time to all work we undertake to fulfil the request

Expenses will be charged based on the following:

• reproducing documents will be charged in accordance with the council's approved fees and charges
• postage and other forms of transmissions for example fax, at cost
• additional costs when an applicant requests the information in a particular format, at cost

Note: the amount charged will not exceed the amount it costs to provide the information.

Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations (RPSI)

While local authorities can charge for datasets and re‑use under FOI/EIR and RPSI, we publish our available data and FOI/EIR responses on our website under the Open Government Licence (version 3), free to re‑use.

Please visit our Frequently requested information webpage to find out more about the re‑use of public sector information, including guidance on what you can and cannot do with the data we provide.