Freedom of Information Policy

The Council will aim to respond to at least 95% of requests received within the 20 working day statutory timeframe under FOIA and EIR. A flowchart of the procedure can be found at Appendix 1.

Accepted formats of information requests

The Council will ensure that it makes available accessible and simple ways for anyone to make an FOI/EIR request to the organisation and that resources are in place to ensure the request is handled in a timely and appropriate manner.

The Information Governance team will accept any written request for information for consideration under the FOIA which includes emails, web-forms via Council web-site / requests portal, letters, submissions from What Do They Know (national, independent web-based portal for submitting and publishing FOI requests) and requests via social media. Requests may also come via services if correspondence is deemed a valid FOI request rather than a service request/complaint.

EIR requests should also be accepted verbally however the standard practice is to receive these requests in writing either as EIR requests or as FOIA requests which are subsequently designated as EIR requests and handled under EIR duties.

Requests will be accepted from any requester with a name and valid email/postal address (including What Do they Know email address) including members of the public, media, corporate entities, other public sector or non-profit organisations, campaign or voluntary groups. It is recommended that Members Enquiries regarding the progress of FOI requests are logged and processed directly through the Members’ Portal and dealt with separately to FOI requests. The Council will fulfil the requirement to be “requester blind” and treat every request equally, subject to any exceptional circumstances identified (see Section 6 – Vexatious requests).

Requests will be logged and actioned in chronological order of receipt unless specific circumstances dictate otherwise. It is recognised that some requests will take longer to produce responses to than others and therefore responses cannot be in chronological order but that at least 95% will be sent responses within the 20 day time-frame, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Format of FOI responses

The Information Governance team will ensure all requests are dealt with in a consistent and professional manner using standard templates for acknowledgements and responses generated through the case management system.

The Information Governance team will notify the requester of any delays to their response and keep them updated on time-frames.

Refusal notices will make clear the reasons for refusal and offer any available advice to enable the requester to make a valid request or seek the information elsewhere (see Section 6 Exemptions and Refusals).

The Information Governance team will provide information on all responses about how to request a review of an FOI response and/or make a complaint to the ICO regarding the handling of a request.

The Information Governance team will ensure that any personal data is not disclosed in a response unless permission has been given by the data subject. Any requester asking for information that the Council holds about them will be advised to make a Data Subject Access Request.

In line with internal procedures the following levels of information will be published and/or included within any response to a request, where relevant, and not redacted:

Chief Executive /Senior Management

• Name and job title / responsibilities
• Office contact details
• Salary information (already on web-site)

Heads of Service

• Name and job title / responsibilities
• Office contact details

Team Leaders/Managers

No job title, name or office contact details unless permission given – or will advise using generic service/team contact details unless responding to a public consultation on behalf of a stakeholder group

Officers

Will advise using generic service/team contact details unless responding to a public consultation on behalf of a stakeholder group

Information Governance team

Use of generic Freedom of Information / Monitoring Officer email and signatures only

Councillors

Direct to contact information on web-site

Contractors/temps/volunteers

No disclosure of information

All email addresses and contact information are blanked out from responses published on What Do They Know to anyone other than the person making the request

For more detail on data disclosure and data protection see our Data Protection Policy.