FOI Fees
These Fees regulations have been compiled in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 Fees Order.
Estimating costs
When estimating the cost of complying with a written request
for information Carlisle City Council will take into account the
staff time, charged at a rate of £25 per hour, involved in the
following activities:
- Determining whether the information is
held,
- Locating the information or a document
which may contain the information,
- Retrieving the information, or a document
that may contain the information, and
- Extracting the information from a document
containing it
If the information you require is not readily available, and
will require some research to provide it, a charge will be made to
reflect the time spent by staff in acquiring that information. You
will however be told in advance of what the charge will be.
Charging
Where the cost of complying with a written request for
information is estimated to be below £450 ("appropriate limit"),
there will be no charge other than the costs of reproducing the
information, postage and other forms of transmitting the
information as specified below.
You will be issued with a fees notice and must pay the
costs specified therein within a period of three months before the
Council can comply with the request.
No charge is made to view information which the Council is
statutorily required to have available to the general public, or
for copies of most of the leaflets, brochures and pamphlets
produced by the Council on a diverse range of subjects.
Charges will be made for the supply of specific documents, such
as Budget Books, Local Plans and Electoral Registers, as detailed
in the Council's Publication Scheme.
Charges That Exceed the Limit
The Council is not obliged to respond to written request for
information where it estimates that the cost of complying with the
request would be in excess of £450 ("appropriate limit"). In such
cases the Council will discuss with the applicant whether he or she
would prefer to modify the request to reduce the cost.
The Council may in exceptional cases comply with a written
request for information that would cost in excess of £450. In such
cases the Council will be entitled to charge for both the estimated
cost of staff time in retrieving and collating the information,
charged at £25 per hour, as well as the costs of informing the
person making the request whether the Council holds the information
and the costs of communicating the information to him or her.
Two or More Related Requests
If the Council receives two or more related requests
within a period of 60 consecutive working days, from a person or
different persons who appear to be acting in concert or in
pursuance of a campaign, the costs of complying with the individual
requests will be aggregated. If the estimated costs of complying
with the requests are added together and the total is found to be
in excess of £450, the Council will not be obliged to comply with
any of the requests.
It is the Council's intention to supply information either
free of charge, or at a reasonable charge having regard to the
costs incurred in supplying that information. Some charges are
however fixed by statute, and the Council has therefore to apply
these in such cases.
Charges for Copying
If you require copies of documents (other than leaflets and
brochures available free of charge), a copying charge will
apply as per the Council's Policy - currently 10p per
copy.
Links
More information regarding fees is available from The
Information Commissioner
http://www.ico.gov.uk/ who is
responsible for enforcing the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the
Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and the Data
Protection Act 1998.
Page last updated - 2
October 2009
