Access to Council Information

Leicestershire County Council is already operating with a high degree of openness but the Freedom of Information Act will enable you to delve deeper into the processes of the authority through accessing more of its information.

NOTE: some of the links on this page are to documents in MS-Word or Adobe Acrobat format (pdf). These are marked where relevant. You may need to download some free reader software in order to view them.
       Help with file formats used on this website

As of January 2005, under the Act, any person making a request for information to the County Council will have the right to be informed in writing as to whether the council holds the information requested. If the information is held, and is not covered by any of the Act’s exemptions, you will have the right to be supplied with that information.

We will also help you to frame your request. You do not have to say (or even know) that you are making the request under the Freedom of Information Act for the rules to apply. When we receive such a request, we must provide the information you have requested but not necessarily the document that contains the information.

Minutes of meetings, letters, e-mail messages between officers, internal reports, notes etc. It also includes information that has been sent to us from other organisations – just because we don’t own the information it doesn’t mean we don’t have to disclose it.

Any important documents that we hold will have a ‘retention period’ attached to them which means that they have to be kept for a certain amount of time before we dispose of them. If a document has already been disposed of according to our retention rules then we cannot be expected to provide the information. We only have to provide existing recorded information. However, it is illegal to destroy information that has been requested to try and avoid having to disclose it. Anybody found guilty of doing this could face a personal fine of up to £5000.

Although you may request any information we hold, there are a few exemptions under the Act that may mean we are not able to disclose the information you need. The exemptions are not there as an excuse to refuse access. They are merely intended to protect information that should not be released.

If a decision is taken to withhold information, it must be linked to a specific exemption and all arguments behind the decision must be clearly documented and made available to the member of the public making the request.

One of the requirements of the Act is for each Public Authority to adopt and maintain a ‘Publication Scheme’ (links to a pdf file). This scheme sets out:

• Classes of information published by LCC
• How the information can be obtained
• Any charge made for the information

LCC has arranged its classes within two broad areas – information relating to the organisation in general, and information relating to services provided. Within these two broad areas, a series of sub-areas have been identified.

• Info available on website – hypertext links will shortly be included (scheme is currently being redesigned) to direct you to the correct page
• Info available by post – a request can be made in writing to:

We aim to provide information listed in the Publication Scheme within 5 working days.

• Printed formats available at specified locations – available on visit to those locations

In order to keep the Publication Scheme up to date we will review it from time to time so please use the website feedback form to let us know whether there are any documents which you feel should be included in the scheme.

We are also currently redesigning the Publication Scheme to make access to the documents within the various classes far easier than at present (this includes adding hyperlinks to relevant documents available on the website).

If the information you want to see is not held within our Publication Scheme you can send us a letter, fax or e-mail requesting the information and, providing it is not covered by one of the exemptions in the Act, we will endeavour to provide you with that information as soon as possible and in any event within 20 working days. Alternatively, you can fill in one of our on-line request forms. If you prefer, you can print out and fill in a form manually – this is available as a pdf document – and send it to us by post.

If we cannot provide the information to you for any reason (e.g. exemptions apply), or we do not have the information you request, we will let you know as soon as we are aware.

• Your name and address
• The information or documents you would like to access
• The format you would prefer – e.g. printed leaflet, e-mail, floppy disk

You may find it interesting to see what will happen to your request once it is received by LCC. If you would like to see the processes that we will use to find and provide the information you have requested, we have produced a flowchart (Word document).

Although FoI and EIR give applicants a right of access, they do not provide them with the right to re-use any information which is disclosed to them.

It can be arranged for any information to be made available in large type and other formats upon request. We can also arrange to have documents translated for you if English is not your first language.

Providing the cost of compiling the information you request does not exceed £450, representing 18 hours of work involved in identifying and collating the information, the information will be provided to you free of charge.

If the cost of compiling a response to your request will be likely to exceed the £450 limit set by Central Government, we will contact you to discuss options.

LCC are continuously trying to improve the services we provide to the public. We would therefore appreciate it if you would take the time to complete the feedback form in order that we can make any necessary improvements to the website / publication scheme. You may remain anonymous if you prefer.

If, for any reason, you are not satisfied with the way LCC deals with a request you make, you can complain to the following address: