According to the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA), there will be no charge for search and collation time for the vast majority of requests under the Act, due to come into force on 1st January 2005, and the fees regime will be easy for public bodies to operate.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOI Act) applies only to UK Public Authorities – Scottish Public Authorities have similar, but separate legislation, also due to come into force on 1st January – and gives the general public rights to access information held by around 100,000 public authorities, including the police, NHS Trusts and GPs.
The Regulations laid before Parliament on Thursday set out the fees regime that will govern the operation of the Act.
They stipulate that public bodies can only refuse to answer a request on the grounds of cost if it would cost more than £450, which equates to about two and half days of searching time. For central government, the limit is £600, roughly three and a half days searching time.
In calculating costs, authorities can take into account the costs of determining whether the information is held, locating and retrieving it, and extracting the information (including editing). They cannot take into account the costs of considering whether information is exempt under the Act.
According to the DCA, if a request would cost less than the appropriate limit, and there is no other basis on which it may be refused or otherwise dealt with, authorities must answer the request.
The maximum fee that can be charged in these cases is limited to the specified costs of postage, printing and photocopying, but the DCA recommends that where the cost of communicating the information to the applicant is low, these charges should be waived.
The authority may charge a fee for requests that would cost more than the appropriate limit to answer, says the DCA, and where the costs would be particuarly high the authorities should discuss with the applicant whether he would prefer to modify the request to reduce the cost.
If the applicant does not agree with the proposed fee, he then has a right of appeal to the Information Commissioner.
The right to access information needs to be balanced by the need of public authorities to carry out their core duties. For this reason, the Act also allows for public authorities to refuse certain requests for information on the grounds of cost where these would be particularly expensive, even if the applicant is willing to pay for the information.
"This Government has maintained that there should be no financial barrier to people who want information about decisions taken about their children's schools, their hospitals, their police forces, and the other areas which affect their life," said Information Rights Minister Baroness Ashton. "The fees introduced today are designed to be easy for public bodies to operate, and to enable people to obtain most information for just the costs of printing, photocopying and postage."