The Freedom of Information Act 2000 is a landmark piece of legislation that provides a public “right of access” to recorded information held by public authorities in the United Kingdom.

Under the act, a public authority is required to publish certain information and to make other information available to whoever formally asks for it. This latter process is known as a freedom of information (FOI) request.

The act, introduced by the first Blair government, was designed to increase transparency, effectively reversing the long-standing culture of official secrecy that had previously dominated in the UK.

How does the Freedom of Information Act work?

Making a request

Anyone can make a Freedom of Information Request, regardless of age, nationality, or residence. Requests must be made in writing and include the real name and address of the person making the inquiry (this can be an email address).

Upon receiving a FOI request, organisations regulated by the Freedom of Information Act must acknowledge whether they hold the requested information and provide it within a 20 working day statutory deadline unless an exception applies. Public organisations have a duty to assist applicants to a reasonable extent.

What information is covered?

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 covers all recorded information that is in the possession of public authorities. This is not limited to official documents, nor to written records, CCTV is also covered for example.

Information that may be known by public employees but not recorded, is not required to be communicated. The Act also does not cover information that is simply held by the public body on behalf of another person or entity.

Which public authorities are covered?

Public authorities are listed in the Act in some cases by name, in others by type (such as a government department or a local council). The Lord Chancellor has the power to expand the Freedom of Information list to include new organisations.

The act is said to apply to over 100,000 public bodies, including central government departments, local councils, NHS trusts, state schools and universities and police forces.

Some public entities only have to provide information about a particular area of their work. For example, health practitioners are only obliged to provide information relating to the NHS.

The 20-working-day deadline

Under the Freedom of Information Act, public authorities must respond to requests promptly, generally within 20 working days of receipt.

The 20 working days limit begins as soon as a request is received by a public authority. Within this timescale a public authority must either provide the information or explain, as fully as possible, why it is not going to do so.

How to make an FOI request

• Identify the correct public authority that is likely to hold the information you want.
• Submit the request in writing. This can be by email, online form, fax, letter or even on social media.
• Include your real name and an address for correspondence (an email address is sufficient).
• Describe the information you are requesting clearly. You do not have to state why you want the information. You can ask for information in a particular format.
• Most requests are free but you might be asked to pay a small amount for photocopies or postage.

If a Freedom of Information application is refused and the enquirer is not satisfied, an individual should first make a complaint through an organisation’s internal complaints procedures. Should that internal review not be met with someone’s satisfaction, they have the right to appeal to the information commissioner.

The information commissioner is then ultimately responsible for the enforcement of the freedom of information application, including ruling on appeal as to whether the request has been adequately resolved.

After 30 years, the records of most public organisations become historical records, meaning any exemptions are no longer valid. For particularly sensitive information, such as that kept by law enforcement, this period of time is longer.

Exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act

There are several situations in which an organisation is allowed to refuse the provision of information. Exemptions are divided between an absolute exemption and a qualified exemption.

• Absolute exemptions: Absolute exemptions are those for which there is no duty to consider disclosure. There is an exemption for matters that relate to national security, cases involving personal information, and where it is necessary to protect commercial interests. If information has already been made public, the organisation is also not required to repeat it in responding to an FOI request.
• Qualified exemptions: A qualified exemption is where the organisation can judge whether releasing or withholding the information would best serve the public interest and meet a public interest test.

A public entity is also not required to provide the information requested if the cost of doing so would exceed £600 for government departments, parliament and the armed forces; the Northern Ireland Assembly or the Welsh Assembly; or based in Scotland. For other public bodies, the threshold is £450.

Development of the Freedom of Information Act and criticisms

Before the Freedom of Information Act, the release of official information was governed by the Official Secrets Act 1911, which made the unauthorised disclosure of any government information a criminal offence.

The 2000 act followed decades of campaigning for greater transparency. The reform was promised in every Labour manifesto since 1974. The Labour Party’s manifesto for the 1997 general election included a commitment to introduce “a Freedom of Information Act, leading to more open government”.

The Blair government subsequently produced a 1997 government white paper, entitled Your Right to Know.

The document stated: “Unnecessary secrecy in government leads to arrogance in governance and defective decision-making. The perception of excessive secrecy has become a corrosive influence in the decline of public confidence in government.”

The Freedom of Information Act received royal assent on 30 November 2000 and came fully into force on 1 January 2005.

Tony Blair has since expressed significant regret over the introduction of the act. Reflecting on the legislation in his memoirs, the former prime minister wrote: “You idiot. You naive, foolish, irresponsible nincompoop. There is really no description of stupidity, no matter how vivid, that is adequate. I quake at the imbecility of it.”

Blair argued that the Freedom of Information Act is used largely not by “the people”, but by journalists. In his view, for political leaders it is “like saying to someone who is hitting you over the head with a stick, ‘Hey, try this instead’, and handing them a mallet.”

The impact of the Freedom of Information Act

The FOI Act has had a significant impact on transparency and politics in the UK.

Perhaps most famous was the Freedom of Information request that led to the 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal. Following this request, the Daily Telegraph published details of the reimbursements claimed by then parliamentarians. The expenses being claimed included a range of elaborate and extravagant items, not least the floating duck pond island of the then Conservative MP, Sir Peter Viggers.

Following the scandal, 390 politicians were ordered to repay £1.3 million of misclaimed expenses.

The whole episode was exposed as a direct result of a series of FOI requests.

As a result of the Daily Telegraph’s investigation, some MPs and Lords later also faced criminal charges for submitting bogus expense claims, being prosecuted variously for dishonesty, expenses fraud or false accounting. Five MPs and two peers (David Chaytor, Jim Devine, Elliot Morley, Eric Illsley, Dennis MacShane, Lord Taylor of Warwick, and Lord Hanningfield) were subsequently prosecuted, found guilty, and imprisoned in relation to their expense claims.

In February 2005, just a month after the Freedom of Information Act came into force, it was revealed that the Treasury had calculated the cost to the UK government of the failed attempt to keep sterling within the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) in 1992 at around £3 billion. This was less than the tens of billions previously estimated.

In January 2006, the Sunday Times obtained documents revealing that, during the 1970s and 1980s, government ministers had sought to establish whether the Loch Ness monster actually existed..

The paper reported that “Whitehall mandarins planned to import highly intelligent mammals from America to establish once and for all whether Nessie existed.”

Files released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that officials were prepared to risk opposition from animal rights groups in pursuit of the truth.

A letter dated May 1979 from David Waymouth, a civil servant at the Department of the Environment, to Stewart Walker at the Scottish Home and Health Department, stated: “This department is presently considering the issue of a licence to import two bottle-nosed dolphins from America for the purpose of exploring Loch Ness, a scheme which has already resulted in opposition from the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

In 2011, a freedom of information request by the London Evening Standard newspaper discovered that 59 diplomats had been arrested in London over three years for a variety of offences, including rape and robbery. These individuals were not able to be charged since they were protected by diplomatic immunity.

In 2013, the Daily Telegraph revealed that a book called How To Be An MP was the most borrowed book in the House of Commons library. The Telegraph described the work, by veteran Labour MP Paul Flynn, as “a step-by-step guide on how to placate constituents, advance one’s career, claim expenses and fend off an inquisitive press.”

Also in 2013, FOI requests by the Manchester Evening News revealed that the former Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Cyril Smith, had interfered with a police investigation into allegations of inappropriate conduct with young boys levelled against him in the 1970s.

The FOI request showed that Smith had questioned inspectors on the details of the investigation and admitted to speaking with witnesses after they had given a statement, resulting in his being warned against such conduct. Smith was never officially charged.

In 2015, the Guardian published letters written by the then Prince of Wales to government ministers, following a 10-year legal battle. The 27 memos, released only after the Guardian won an FOI fight with the government, showed Charles making direct demands to Tony Blair as prime minister and several key figures in his Labour government.

More recently, the act was crucial in uncovering details of the “VIP lane” for PPE contracts during the Covid-19 pandemic and the extent of dangerous RAAC concrete in schools.

Environmental Information Regulations (EIR)

A parallel regime, under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, gives the public a similar right of access to any environmental information held by public authorities.

Challenges to the current FOI framework

The Freedom of Information Act faces several contemporary challenges.

Use of private messaging

The growing use of non-official communication channels, such as WhatsApp, by ministers and officials creates a risk that key decisions and discussions are not formally recorded, placing them beyond the scope of the act. The extensive reliance on private correspondence during the pandemic heightened concerns about transparency and accountability.

In January 2025, the first-tier tribunal ruled that WhatsApp messages held by a minister on behalf of a department fall within the scope of Freedom of Information Act, even where those messages had not been transferred into the department’s official records.

The tribunal ruled that a government department “holds” relevant WhatsApp messages for the purposes of section 3(2)(b) of the Freedom of Information Act. Section 3(2)(b) provides that information is considered to be held by a public authority where it is held by another person on behalf of that authority. This provision is particularly relevant to information contained in non-corporate communications channels, such as private messaging apps.

The Cabinet Office ‘clearing house’

This unit, which coordinated responses to FOI requests deemed “sensitive”, was criticised for potentially obstructing the release of information. In 2020, openDemocracy reported that the clearing house had advised that the release of documents relating to the contaminated NHS blood scandal should be “managed”. Officials reportedly warned that former ministers would be “very sore” about the disclosure of information concerning their time in office.

In 2022, the Guardian reported that in light of the clearing house’s controversies, it would be replaced by an FOI “centre of excellence”.

Timeliness

There are persistent concerns about public authorities, particularly central government departments, failing to meet the 20-day statutory deadline for responses.

Outsourcing

When public services are contracted out to private companies, those companies are not typically subject to the FOI Act, creating a potential transparency deficit.

A review of the Freedom of Information Act in 2016, the independent commission on freedom of information, chaired by Lord Burns (the Burns Commission), said that there was a case for improving access to information about the performance and delivery of outsourced services.

The Burns report stated: “The commission is persuaded that there is a need for greater transparency in outsourced public services.”

In April 2022, a cross-party letter signed by several MPs, including the then-shadow solicitor general Andy Slaughter, the former Brexit secretary David Davis, and the former Green party leader Caroline Lucas, as well as senior journalists, called for better enforcement of transparency laws and accused the government of obstructing freedom of information requests.

The letter stated: “FOI is a critical tool for rooting out ills – as journalists demonstrate every week. But as openDemocracy’s recent Access Denied report outlines, increases in late responses, stonewalling, public-interest-test delays, repeated misuse of exemptions, as well as opaque and inconsistent monitoring and enforcement mean that the current regulatory approach to FOI is clearly not working.”

It added: “The accountability that FOI provides is in real danger of disappearing, which poses a threat to the long-term national interest of this country. It is time for fresh thinking and bold action to deliver FOI transparency in the public interest.”