To be told whether or not the public authority hold that information; and if so,
To have that information communicated to them.
Anyone can request information under the Act after 1st January 2005, regardless of age, nationality or location (i.e. requests can be made from anywhere in the world). A limited number of exemptions do exist but if one of these are used as a reason not to supply the information you must provide details of how to appeal.
Organisations do not have to provide information which is already reasonably accessible to the applicant. Requests may be for copies of documents or papers that are held by the organisation or may be for specific pieces of information that needs collating and preparing in response to the request.
On receipt of a “Request for Information” (RFI) you have 20 working days in which to provide the information on which exemption applies.
The 20 days includes the time it takes you to work out the cost of responding to the request, though the clock stops whilst waiting for the applicant to make the payment.
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There are three stages in preparing for the Act coming into force.
By October 2003 all Trusts had to produce, and have approved, a “Publication Scheme” that gives details of the types of information held by the organisation, how to obtain the information and the cost, if any.
This document should be available to the public (many have been published on Trust web-sites). Between October 2003 and December 2004 organisations need to work out what information they hold and how much of this is to be made publically accessible (i.e. copies placed in local libraries or on their Internet site).
By 1st Jan 2005 organisations need to have a system in place that is able to deal with RFIs that are received. All written requests for information should be treated as falling within the scope of the act, no matter who receives them within the organisation, and the appropriate response made within 20 working days.
Requests that are received verbally should be written up and sent back to the originator for confirmation. It only counts as an RFI under the FOI when the written request is returned.
