Freedom Of Information Act 2000
This page is about your rights under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 gives a right of access to recorded information held by public authorities. This includes this council.
What you can access and what is exempt
You can request any information that the council holds either on paper or as electronic records.
Some information cannot be released and will be exempt from the terms of the FOI Act. A full list of exemptions is available on request. These exemptions cover such information as personal data about individuals, contractual details or information due for release in the future etc.
Requesting information
A request should be made in writing by letter, email, online form or Twitter. Your request should state your name and address, and describe the information you require.
Online form
Write to
Information Officer
Reigate & Banstead Borough Council
Town Hall, Castlefield Road
Reigate
RH2 0SH
You are entitled to tell the council how you wish to view the information. These can either be:
- paper copy
- inspection of the information at the Town Hall
- digest or summary of the information.
Cost of requesting information
The vast majority of requests will processed free of charge although the council may charge a small fee for copying and postage.
Requests for information which involve a significant amount of Council time to locate, retrieve and extract the information may involve a fee. This would be notified to you and your agreement obtained to pay it before the request is processed.
Time taken to produce the information
We will try to provide the information as quickly as possible and in any case within 20 working days, starting from the day after the request is recorded.
If a fee is required, the days between the dates on which a fees notice is sent to you and the day the fee is paid will not form part of the 20 working day time limit.
If the council requires more information to identify or locate the information requested and it has informed you of this, the 20 working day time limit will not begin until you have supplied that information.
When we do not have to give information
The council does not have to give information that falls into the category of 'absolute exemption'.
In these cases the council will need to apply the public interest test and consider whether withholding the information outweighs the public interest in disclosing it. Details of all categories of exemption are available on request from our Customer Services team, email customer.services@reigate-banstead.gov.uk.
Unhappy with the our response
If you are unhappy with our response to your request, you may lodge a complaint under the council’s complaints procedure. Details of how to do this will be provided with our reply to you. If you do complain, the Chief Executive will arrange for your request to be reviewed.
If you remain dissatisfied after this review, you may then ask the Information Commissioner to decide whether the council has dealt with the request correctly and within the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
If the Information Commissioner feels that the council’s decision was unjust then the council may be forced to provide the information requested.
If you or the council are unhappy with the Commissioner’s findings then either party may appeal to the Information Tribunal.
Disclosure logs
You can see the FOI requests we have dealt with.
- FOI disclosure log 2005 (PDF document [167.4Kb]) FOI disclosure logs 2012:
- FOI disclosure log 2006 (PDF document [162.8Kb]) January (Excel sheet [52Kb]) xls
- FOI disclosure log 2007 (PDF document [203.4Kb]) February (Excel sheet [51Kb]) xls
- FOI disclosure log 2008 (PDF document [308Kb]) March (Excel sheet [53Kb]) xls
- FOI disclosure log 2009 (PDF document [460.9Kb])
- FOI disclosure log 2010 (PDF document [483.9Kb])
- FOI disclosure log 2011 (PDF document [542.7Kb]).
See also
Payments to Suppliers - all payments made to external suppliers over £500 are publicly available for you to view. So you might like to view this before submitting an FOI as it may answer your question.
Last updated : 25/04/2012
