Freedom of Information
While 40 countries worldwide have implemented Freedom of Information legislation, the FOI Act is new to the UK. The Act will run alongside the Data Protection Act 1988.
Requests for information must be made in writing.
Public bodies, including the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership, have a statutory duty to respond to requests and provide information within 20 working days of receipt of the query.
All information that is held by public bodies will be provided to the public except for that which qualifies for exemptions - exemptions are decided mainly on whether disclosing the information is in the public interest or not.
Areas of Exemption:
Information that is reasonably accessible by the public in that it is already in the public domain is exempt under Section 21. This includes information provided by Partnerships on websites or in other publicity materials.
Most personal information will continue to be subject to the Data Protection Act 1998.
Certain information that relates to commercial activities may be exempt because the Act facilitates an exemption for Commercial Interests.
The specific exemptions contained in the Act that may be relevant to information held by Safety Camera Partnerships are:
- Section 30 - Investigations
- Section 31 - Law Enforcement
- Section 36 - Prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs
- Section 38 - Health and Safety
- Section 43 - Commercial Interests.
Two specific categories of information are of particular concern to Safety Camera Partnerships. These are a) details of enforcement thresholds and b) information that could be used to deduce enforcement activity at specific sites or routes.
In September 2004 ACPO applied the public interest test to evaluate whether withholding such information from the public better served the interests of the public than releasing it, and agreed that the benefit of disclosing such information was outweighed by the potential consequences to law enforcement and to the impact on road safety. As such, their guidance is that these two categories of information qualify for exemptions under Section 31 of the Act.
Exemptions may also be applied to a third category of concern - information that could jeopardise the safety or security of Partnership staff or assets – where Partnerships have a well-founded concern about the safety or security of their staff or assets. These exemptions will be made on an individual basis.
Information that is held by a public body with a view to its publication at a later stage may also be exempt under Section 22.
