About the Freedom of Information Act

The Freedom of Information Act came into force on 1st January 2005. The Act seeks to promote a culture of openness within public administration and aims to balance three rights:

• The right to information

• The right to confidentiality

• The right to effective public administration

The underlying principle of the Act is that all information held by a public authority should be freely available, apart from a number of exempt items.

The Act places 2 main obligations upon public authorities -

To adopt and maintain a publication scheme

Our publication scheme was approved and made available in February 2003. We are currently revising our Scheme in line with recent guidance issued by the Information Commissioner, and this will soon be available for download from this site.

To comply with requests for information

From 1 January 2005, each public authority must comply with requests for the information that it holds, unless an exemption from disclosure applies.

In this section you can find out more about your rights under the act, and how to request information under it.