Governance: Freedom of Information & Data Protection

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) provides public access to information held by public authorities and the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) regulates the use of personal data and enables individuals to make a subject access request to find out what data about them is being held by an organisation and how it is being processed.

We are committed to making information readily available to the public wherever it is possible and practical to do so and continue to publish information about our work so that those seeking data can find it without having to make specific requests. By law, FOIA requests should be responded to within 20 working days and subject access requests under DPA within 40 working days.

In 2017, we:

  • Received 20 requests for information (down from 32 in 2016)
  • Responded to all requests within the statutory timescale
  • Experienced no data breaches
  • Dedicated 70 hours of staff time to handling requests

requests for information received