Lewes District Council

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Freedom Of Information
Lewes District Council
32 High Street
Lewes
East Sussex
BN7 2LX

Tel: 01273 484174
foi@lewes.gov.uk
Minicom 01273 484488

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FOI Fees

Freedom of InformationMost information provided by us is free. However, exceptions do apply, with the fees and reasons set out.

We charge for information or documents already in the Council’s publication scheme where we have indicated a fee is payable. Details of the appropriate fees are available from the named contacts in the scheme.

For other requests we have to estimate the cost of complying. In doing so, we take account determining whether the information is held and the cost of locating, retrieving and extracting it.

These costs are calculated on the basis of an hourly rate of £25 a person. This is a nationally-set rate.

We are not allowed to take account of the cost of checking whether a request is valid, considering exemptions, calculating fees, considering whether a request is a repeated request or providing advice and assistance to enquirers.

The Government has set a limit on costs, namely 'the appropriate limit' of £450 which is equivalent to 18 hours work. There is no charge for requests below this.

However, in addition to the costs of finding and retrieving the information we are allowed to charge for actual costs incurred in answering a query.

This will cover such items as photocopying, postage and any costs incurred in putting the information in the applicant’s preferred format. This does not include the staff time involved to produce it.

Making reasonable adjustments for disabled people such as providing material in Braille or on audio tape will not incur a charge.

Small Requests

We have decided we will not charge for disbursements where the cost will be less than £20. We anticipate that few enquiries will result in photocopying and postage costs exceeding this limit.

Therefore, for enquiries that need less than 18 hours work to answer and do not produce substantial numbers of documents there will be no charge.

Large Requests

If the cost of complying is greater than £450, even though the law does not require us to, we will answer the request if the applicant agrees to pay the full cost.

In these cases we are allowed to charge for the staff time incurred in photocopying, posting and producing the information. Once again the hourly rate for staff time is set at £25 per-hour.

We are happy to discuss changes to queries to reduce costs. Or applicants can ask the Information Commissioner to intervene if they do not agree with our decision on costs.

Paying Fees

If a fee is payable, we will send out details and request payment before releasing the information. If the fee is not paid within three months the request will be cancelled and will not be answered.

The 20 working days in which the Council has to respond stops once the fees notice has been issued and only starts again once the fee has been received.

If the fee exceeds the appropriate limit of £450, we will offer to discuss how to limit the query to a more manageable level when the notice is issued.

Repeated Requests

In certain situations, the costs of answering more than one request can be added together or aggregated for the purposes of estimating whether the appropriate limit would be exceeded in relation to any one of those requests.

Requests can only be aggregated in the following circumstances: