Although the University has obligations to provide information when a Freedom of Information request is made – there are limits. It was foreseen when the legislation was put into place almost 20 years ago that requests could be made that would take excessive time to answer and there needed to be a balance.
As a result, a cost limit was drawn up which means that if it would cost £600 or more to answer a question, then the authority does not need to undertake the required work.
However, as part of this cost calculation, there are some rules. Firstly, the maximum you can charge per hour of work is £15 – so even if the Principal is the one doing the work – £15 is still the maximum you can charge! At £15 per hour, £600 works out at 40 hours of work and this is a good way to try to establish whether the work might reach the cost limit. You do need to be mindful that cost calculation is per question, not for the entire request.
Another rule is that you can only count certain things as part of the cost calculations – this includes locating, retrieving, and providing the information – this includes the making of redactions. However, you are not allowed to count the time needed to decide whether the information can be released or whether an exemption applies that would allow for it to be withheld.
It is expected that when considering using a cost exemption, you try to advise and assist the applicant to amend their request to make it more manageable. For example, if the question is initially for 5 years' worth of data, it might be reasonable to suggest reducing it to one year. In some cases, it may not be possible to reduce, but it should be considered.
It is also worth noting that if you are dealing with an environmental information request, the rules are different again and there is no exact cost limit, but rather that a judgement has to be made on whether the cost of providing a response would disrupt the University’s ability to perform its core functions. Some more information can be found on our staffnet page.
For those of you who may occasionally be asked to help respond to a FOI request, please bear in mind that if there is a significant amount of work involved, please speak to the Information Governance Team about whether the cost exemption may apply at foi@abdn.ac.uk.