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Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Requests (EIR)

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004 give you rights to access official information recorded and held by public authorities.

Check published information first

Before you make an FOI or EIR request, you should check our Publication Scheme or Data Transparency pages to see if we have already published the information you are looking for:

Publication Scheme

Data Transparency page

If you cannot find the information you are looking for on our website, often routine enquiries can be resolved with a phone call to the relevant service. Please contact us.

Make an FOI or EIR request

To help us process your request as efficiently as possible, please provide as much information as possible about the data you require - for example,  'minutes of the meeting where the decision to do X was made' rather than 'everything you have about X'.  If it is not clear what you want, we may have to contact you to clarify this which may mean there is a delay in completing your request.

FOI request online

Possible charges

We may charge a small fee for photocopying, postage and packing.  We will let you know this cost before we send you the information you have asked for.

Exemptions

We may not disclose information if it falls under one of the exemptions given in the Freedom of Information Act 2000

Number of requests

There is no limit to the amount of requests you can make providing each request is different. If you make repeated requests for the same information or are obviously trying to disrupt our work we reserve the right to refuse your requests. You can find information on repeated and vexatious requests on the Information Commissioner's website

Confidentiality

Your request is not confidential. We may publish your request and our response, as well as any other communications relating to the request.  We will remove all personal details such as your name and contact details.

Accessible information

If you need to receive information in a different format, just let us know and we can organise this for you. Email foi@waverley.gov.uk

Personal information 

The regulations and the Freedom of Information Act do not give people access to their own personal data (information about themselves). Individuals have a right to access information held about them under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). See Request access to personal information (Subject Access Request)

More information

See the Information Commissioner's Office website for guidance and advice for the public

Find out more about The Freedom of Information Act on gov.uk

Email foi@waverley.gov.uk if you have any queries.

General information about data protection and the GDPR please see our main privacy notice.