Fees and charges
The FOI Act and EIR allow public authorities to recover costs when responding to a request for information, for example costs associated with photocopying, printing and postage. Most requests for information will be responded to by email and in such cases there would normally be no costs to recover. If it is necessary to make a charge for a request we would let you know before we carry out any work on the request. In such cases payment must be received before we will send the information.
Under FOI, we will not charge for staff time, unless other legislation allows this. However, if the cost of complying with the request exceeds the 'appropriate limit' then we are permitted to recover our full costs, including staff time. The appropriate limit is set at 18 hours or £450 (known as the appropriate limit) and is outlined below.
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.
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