FOI performance

Freedom of Information compliance at The National Archives

The vast majority of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests received by The National Archives are in relation to our archival holdings. Increasingly, these request are for access to historic military service personnel records. You can learn more about the transfer of personnel records at our project page.

Like most public bodies, The National Archives also receives FOI requests in relation to how it conducts its business. We refer to these as ‘corporate’ FOI requests.

To increase transparency, our performance against each of these type of request is set out below.

Our overall FOI performance figures are also reported on a quarterly and annual basis as part of FOI Statistics published by Cabinet Office.

Requests received (2023)

Request type January–March April–June July–September
MOD service records 2694 2666 4528
Other archival records 1069 1170 972
Corporate requests 18 28 20
All requests 3781 3864 5532

 

Percentage meeting deadline or with permitted extension (2023)

Request type January–March April–June July–September
MOD service records 54% 41% 48%
Other archival records 89% 95% 94%
Corporate requests 100% 100% 91%
All requests 64% 56% 56%

 

Requests received (2022)

Request type January–March April–June July–September October–December
MOD service records 435 865 1094 1813
Other archival records 1061 819 995 744
Corporate requests 39 21 25 17
All requests 1535 1705 2114 2574

 

Percentage meeting deadline or with permitted extension (2022)

Request type January–March April–June July–September October–December
MOD service records 48% 34% 39% 58%
Other archival records 80% 76% 78% 87%
Corporate requests 82% 81% 88% 94%
All requests 71% 54% 57% 67%