Charges - Publication Scheme

We are obligated under section 19(2)(c) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, to state whether information we make available via our publication scheme will attract a charge or otherwise. There is, however, no statutory provision under the Act which refers to charges that may be made for information made available this way.

Generally, information which you can download from our scheme will be free of charge unless otherwise stated. However, where hard copies of such information are requested via the postal system, we may charge for postage.

Fees - Freedom of Information Requests

An “appropriate limit” for requests has been prescribed by the Government. This has been set at £450 for public authorities such as ours. What this means is that where it costs us more than £450 to retrieve the information which you have requested, we are no longer obligated to provide this unless we choose to do so.

In order to calculate how much it costs us to retrieve information we will use the rate prescribed by the Government which is £25 per hour. We may also charge you for disbursements associated with your request such as printing, copying and postage but we will inform you whether we intend to charge for this on acknowledgement of your request. Where charges are levied for printing and photocopying we will use a rate of 10p per A4 sheet (whether double or single sided). In respect of postage, we will use recorded delivery as standard unless you ask us not to. Disbursements costing less than £50 will be waived.

We will provide electronic copies of information on CD in PDF format at no charge unless the cost of recording media combined with postage exceeds £50, in which case a fees notice will be issued.

Where we choose to satisfy requests which we estimate will go beyond the appropriate limit, we may charge you the full cost incurred by us in finding, retrieving and extracting the information. The fee will include the first £450 and will be calculated using an hourly rate of £25 per hour. Where your request falls under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 we will only charge where to comply with the request would take over 18 hours (as per the arrangements under the Freedom of Information Act).