About the Act

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides public access to information held by public authorities.

It does this in two ways:

• public authorities are obliged to publish certain information about their activities; and
• members of the public are entitled to request information from public authorities.

The Act covers any recorded information that is held by a public authority in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and by UK-wide public authorities based in Scotland. Information held by Scottish public authorities is covered by Scotland’s own Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.

Public authorities include government departments, local authorities, the NHS, state schools and police forces. However, the Act does not necessarily cover every organisation that receives public money. For example, it does not cover some charities that receive grants and certain private sector organisations that perform public functions.

Recorded information includes printed documents, computer files, letters, emails, photographs, and sound or video recordings.

The Act does not give people access to their own personal data (information about themselves) such as their health records or credit reference file. If a member of the public wants to see information that a public authority holds about them, they should make a data protection subject access request.

We will always provide as much information as possible, but there are rules that allow us to withhold certain types of information. For example, if providing the information would infringe someone else’s privacy or, if the information you have asked for would take longer than 18 hours to acquire.  If we are unable to provide any information we will explain why. 

On an occasion where we may seek to withhold information under Section 36 of the Freedom of Information Act, the Combined Authority’s designated qualified person is Rachel Antonelli, Director of Legal & Governance (Monitoring Officer).