Guidance on Calculating Fees

The following guidance is based on what the FOI Act itself says, what is contained in the FOI Fees Regulations and guidance received from the Lord Chancellor. Please note that this is mandatory and must be followed by all departments. If you have any doubt as to what you may or may not charge for, please consult the FOI Implementation Unit before seeking to make any charge.

General

A limit of £450 has been set under which information will be provided without charging a fee, though limited "disbursement costs" (see below) may be reclaimed.

Estimating costs for a single enquiry

Only costs relating to the duty to confirm or deny the information is held, or to supply the information requested, may be taken into account. These costs are defined as those incurred:

• in determining whether the information is held;
• in locating the information or document holding it;
• in retrieving the information or document holding it;
• extracting the information from a document containing it.

In other words, time spent in finding, sorting, editing or redacting material. In estimating the cost of staff time spent undertaking any (or all) of the above, a rate of £25 per person per hour must be used. The £450 limit is deemed to be the equivalent of 2 and a half days´ work.

Note that you are not allowed to charge a standard flat-rate fee, nor for staff time spent:

• considering Exemptions that might apply;
• considering whether or not the Public Interest Test applies;
• confirming or denying the information is held;
• supplying the applicant with the information.

Estimating costs for repeated or "campaign" enquiries

Repeated enquiries are those where two or more requests from the same individual relate to any extent to the same or similar information and are received within any period of 60 consecutive working days.

"Campaign" enquiries are those where two or more requests relating to any extent to the same or similar information are received from different persons who appear to the University to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign and are received within any period of 60 consecutive working days.

In both cases, the rules for a single enquiry still apply, but the estimated cost of complying with any one of the requests is taken to be the total cost of complying with all of them. This is known as "aggregation of related requests".

Estimating costs of disbursement

Disbursement costs include the costs of:

• complying with the obligation to supply the information by a particular means or in a particular form where practicable [eg hard copy];
• reproducing any document containing the information [eg by photocopying];
• postage or other form of transmitting the information [eg courier fee].

Disbursement costs can be reclaimed (and do not count as a fee), but bear in mind that for small amounts, the cost of recovery (including staff time) may be higher than the revenue generated. The University FOI Implementation Group, having taken the advice of the Finance Office, has decided to allow departments to use their discretion as to whether they reclaim small amounts.

Fees for disclosure where the cost of compliance exceeds the £450 limit

The University is not obliged to supply information where it would cost more than the limit of £450 to provide it, although it is allowed to do so if it so wishes and is allowed to charge the cost of doing so.

In this case only, the following can be included in estimating the costs:

• the same items as for a single enquiry;
• the costs of informing the applicant whether the information is held and for supplying it, including the cost in this case of staff time at the rate of £25 per person per hour;
• disbursement costs, as above.

Note, however, that aggregated costs as described above can not be included in these circumstances.

Fees Notices

Note that in all cases where it is decided to charge a fee, a Fees Notice informing the applicant of the likely cost must be sent to the applicant before any information is supplied. The applicant can then decide whether or not to proceed with the request. The 20 working days within which the information is required to be supplied is suspended from the date of the Fees Notice being issued until the Fee is received. If no Fee is received, the request lapses after 3 months from the date of the issue of the Fees Notice.