Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label freedom of information

Freedom of information trumps restriction of access

The constitutional affairs select committee has declared that the Governments plans to limit FOI requests (including bundling multiple requests from the same group / company together and regarding them as a single ‘request’, regardless of the information requested) has not got enough basis, and on that grounds, there is no support for changing the current charging and handling regime. Quote from summary page: “The Government has not shown that it adequately reviewed whether the existing charging regime balanced public access rights with the needs of public authorities to deliver services effectively, before deciding to restrict public access rights further; • We have not received sufficient evidence to support the need to change access rights in the way proposed; • The cost-benefit analysis prepared by the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) to support the proposed regime is insufficient; • We have not received any evidence to show that the new charging regime wou...