What do the fee regulations under FOI cover?
The fees regulations under FOI broadly cover 2 areas- (1) Fee charges for information provided through the publication scheme and (2) fee charges for specific information requests. (1) Fee charges for information provided through the publication scheme There are no separate fee regulations with regard to publication scheme information. The Act states at s19(2) – http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00036–d.htm#19 that ‘A publication scheme must- ……. and (c) specify whether the material is, or is intended to be, available to the public free of charge or on payment. ‘ This has been interpreted as meaning that if the information is available through the publication scheme, the public authority is free to decide whether to charge for it or not and can set its own charges. The information Commissioner has produced some indication as to what needs to be considered when setting the charges and this can be found in the paper at the link ‘publication scheme charges’ on the IC web site at –
