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Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Charges

Freedom of Information (FoI) charges

No charge will be made for the first £450 (the Appropriate Limit) of costs relating to search and collation time i.e. time spent:

Determining whether the information is held
Locating and retrieving it, and
Extracting the information (including editing).

Where it is estimated that search and collation time will exceed the Appropriate Limit, we will discuss the requirements with the applicant to try and reduce the costs to within the Appropriate Limit. If this is not possible we will consider each request individually and either:

Refuse to answer the request, or
Apply the charge of £25 per hour of officer time to all work undertaken to fulfil the request.

Disbursements will be charged based on the following regime:

Reproducing documents, 10p for each A4 sheet
Postage and other forms of transmissions e.g. fax at cost
Additional costs related to complying with an applicant's request for the information in a particular format at cost.

When a request is made for information that is listed in the publication scheme, we will usually claim an exemption. However, where there are accessibility problems we will try and offer assistance with access. Although each request will be assessed individually to take into account factors such as the quantity of information requested or the location that it needs to be sent to, in general we will make the following charges.

Where the information is on the website but the applicant does not have access to a computer we will charge the charges listed in the publication scheme or where they are not listed on the publication scheme we will levy the charges listed for disbursements above.
Where the applicant has visual disabilities but can read Braille we will charge the cost of translation and disbursements as above.
Where the applicant does not read English and would like a translation we will charge the cost of translation and disbursements as above.

Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) Charges

There is no charge for locating, retrieving or extracting environmental information, or for:

Information contained in the public register we hold
Lists of information
Examining information at the Council's offices.

The charges for environmental information not covered above essentially cover:

Reproduction of documents, 10p for each A4 sheet
Postage and other forms of transmission e.g. fax at cost
Staff time, - if information is to be created for the purposes of the request (i.e. outside the EIR) then the charge is at an hourly rate in accordance with the Council's Annual Budget Book and Charging Policy. The hourly charge for 2011/12 is £73.46.