Freedom Of Information

Introduction

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 ("FoIA") came into force on 1 January 2005. It had a broad ambit, granting anyone living anywhere in the world the right to request information held in any form from more than 100,000 public and quasi public bodies. The Act was seen as a fundamental change in the public sector, moving from a culture of withholding information to one of disclosure. Approximately 47,000 FoIA requests were made in the first 6 months of its operation; initially the majority of these were made by the opposition political parties and newspapers, but now the majority of requests are made by businesses dealing or seeking to do business with the public sector. Whilst headlines may be grabbed by use of the FoIA to determine the Ministry of Defence's position on UFOs or the expenses incurred by various public figures there is a very practical side to the Act that businesses need to be aware of, both in terms of seeking competitive advantage and in preventing disclosure of their information that has been provided to public bodies.

Publication schemes

The FoIA requires each public body to maintain an approved publication scheme and to publish information in accordance with that scheme. The intention is to put as much information in the public domain as is reasonable. In practice this means information can be made publicly available even without a specific request to obtain it having been made. Because there is no set format for these schemes the information released under them varies greatly from one public sector body to another and it is wise, before submitting information to a public body, to review their publication scheme.

Requests for information

Any requests for information under the Act must identify the requesting party and be in writing, but other than these obligations there are almost no formalities for making a request under the FoIA; in particular there is no need to mention (or even intend) that a request be governed by the Act, whether it is applicable or not is a question of fact. The public body must generally respond to requests within 20 working days of receipt. Initially this target was missed by many bodies, but the situation is improving. When responding to a request the public body must typically disclose two related issues: the first is to inform the enquirer whether the authority holds information requested and, if it does hold that information, to communicate it to the applicant. The means of...