The fees regulations under FOI broadly cover 2 areas- (1) Fee charges for information provided through the publication scheme and (2) fee charges for specific information requests.
(1) Fee charges for information provided through the publication scheme
There are no separate fee regulations with regard to publication scheme information. The Act states at s19(2) - http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2000/00036--d.htm#19 that
'A publication scheme must-
....... and
(c) specify whether the material is, or is intended to be, available to the public free of charge or on payment. '
This has been interpreted as meaning that if the information is available through the publication scheme, the public authority is free to decide whether to charge for it or not and can set its own charges.
The information Commissioner has produced some indication as to what needs to be considered when setting the charges and this can be found in the paper at the link 'publication scheme charges' on the IC web site at - www.ico.gov.uk
In this paper, the IC states 'The Act does not provide any guidance on the level of charges that a public authority can make for the provision of the information contained in a publication scheme. However, the level of any charges should be compatible with the principle of promoting public access to the information held by public authorities. ....
...In setting prices for publications, authorities should also bear in mind that it will be easy for the public to compare charging regimes across similar organisations.
Public authorities should not use the inclusion of information in a publication scheme as an opportunity to charge for information which [was] previously free.'
In addition an FAQ on the ICO website at - http://www.ico.gov.uk/ - states as follows
'Q. How much can we charge the public for providing information from our scheme?
The Act does not prescribe a fee structure this is a matter for each organisation to decide. However, in doing so, you should be mindful of the need to have regard to the public interest, and the general accessibility of information within your scheme.....'
However, once all of the above has been taken into consideration and a publication scheme agreed, The Department of Constitutional affairs states in their guidance that 'Authorities are free to charge for publications that comply with the requirement of section 21 of the FOI Act that the information should be reasonably accessible. It will always be reasonably accessible if provided in accordance with an authority's publication scheme.'
It should be noted that both the DCA and the IC guidance is not legally binding and it remains to be seen what the actual decision will be when if an individual felt the fees being requested were a barrier to the provision of the information and therefore did not make the information reasonably accessible in terms of S21. Indeed, he might decide to set the complaints procedure in motion and if the complaint reached the IC, presumably he would consider the complaint from the viewpoint of his guidance as quoted above. It is up to each public authority to judge whether, in the light of all the information including the negative publicity that may result from too high charges, their information charges have been set at a reasonable level. Hopefully more guidance will emerge as complaints are received or the IC carries out audits/reviews of individual college publication schemes.
(2) Fee charges for specific information requests for information not available through the publication scheme.
The amount an institution in England Wales and NI (it is different for Scotland see separate link below) may charge is set out in the fees regulations. You can access these on line at -
http://www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm
In broad terms it is our initial understanding that information not available through the publication scheme or elsewhere, should be provided at no cost to the enquirer if the cost of provision falls under £450. The regulations then go on to set out how the costs should be calculated in order to estimate whether the cast of providing the information falls within the limit. The DCA has published guidance on the fees regulations at
http://www.dca.gov.uk/foi/feesguide.htm#part3