Request
Could you provide me with a copy of your organisations Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Request policy and procedure?
Do you publish your responses to FOI/EIR requests?
How many FOI/EIR requests did you receive in each month last year? (either from January – December, or April – March is fine)
What percentage of FOI/EIR requests do you reply to ‘in time’? (within the 20 day time limit)
What team manages your FOI process? (for example: Legal, Media, Governance, etc.)
How many FOI officers, or equivalent role, do you have? (staff members specifically working on FOI responses/process)
What management system do you use to record FOI/EIR requests? (for example: Salesforce, Pentana, Civica etc.)
Outcome
Some information provided.
Response
Could you provide me with a copy of your organisations Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Request policy and procedure?
The National Archives does not hold a specific Freedom of Information/Environmental Information Request policy and procedure document.
The National Archives processes Freedom of Information/Environmental Information requests in line with the guidance provided by the Information Commissioner’s Office – Guide to freedom of information | ICO and Guide to the Environmental Information Regulations. In a similar way to the ICO guidance, we have a variety of internal guidance and training material to support our approach to the various aspects of handling such requests.
There is lots of further general information relating to The National Archives’ Freedom of Information procedures and processes on our website – Freedom of Information (nationalarchives.gov.uk) which we hope you will find helpful.
Do you publish your responses to FOI/EIR requests?
Responses to requests received by The National Archives for information from our own corporate records are published on our website – Information requests – Freedom of Information (nationalarchives.gov.uk)
We do not publish responses for requests to see closed archival records.
How many FOI/EIR requests did you receive in each month last year? (either from January – December, or April – March is fine)
Month/Year Requests received
| January 2021 | 126 |
| February 2021 | 245 |
| March 2021 | 316 |
| April 2021 | 336 |
| May 2021 | 302 |
| June 2021 | 269 |
| July 2021 | 309 |
| August 2021 | 304 |
| September 2021 | 382 |
| October 2021 | 293 |
| November 2021 | 301 |
| December 2021 | 238 |
What percentage of FOI/EIR requests do you reply to ‘in time’? (within the 20 day time limit)
This information is exempt under section 21 of the FOI Act (for further information on this exempt see the explanatory annexe below).
What team manages your FOI process? (for example: Legal, Media, Governance, etc.)
The Freedom of Information Centre at The National Archives is based within the Public Access and Government Services Directorate.
How many FOI officers, or equivalent role, do you have? (staff members specifically working on FOI responses/process)
At present there are seven members of staff dedicated to processing FOI requests. These staff are overseen by three FOI managers and one Head of Centre. In addition there are five staff dedicated to processing requests for Ministry of Defence material. These staff are overseen by the Head of Information Rights.
What management system do you use to record FOI/EIR requests? (for example: Salesforce, Pentana, Civica etc.)
This information in exempt under section 31 of the FOI Act (for further information on this exempt see the explanatory annexe below).
Explanatory annexe
Exemptions applied
Section 21: Information readily available to the applicant by other means
Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) does not oblige a public authority to provide information if it is already reasonably accessible by other means.
In this case the exemption applies because the information regarding our FOI statistics is already available via The Cabinet Office’s official reporting – Freedom of Information statistics – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Further guidance on the application of this exemption can be found at: https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1203/information-reasonably-accessible-to-the-applicant-by-other-means-sec21.pdf
Section 31: Law Enforcement
We are unable to provide you with information specific to IT systems because this information is exempt from disclosure under section 31 (1) (a) of the FOI Act. Section 31 (1) (a) exempts information if its disclosure is likely to prejudice the prevention or detection of crime.
Section 31 is a qualified exemption and we are required to conduct a public interest test when applying any qualified exemption. This means that after it has been decided that the exemption is engaged, the public interest in releasing the information must be considered. If the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in withholding it then the exemption does not apply and the information must be released. In the FOI Act there is a presumption that information should be released unless there are compelling reasons to withhold it.
The public interest test has now been concluded and the balance of the public interest has been found to fall in favour of withholding information covered by the section 31 (1) (a) exemption. Considerations in favour of the release of the information included the principle that there is a public interest in transparency and accountability in disclosing information about government procedure and contracts. However, release of this information would make The National Archives more vulnerable to crime. The crime in question here would be a malicious attack on The National Archives’ computer systems. As such, release of this information would be seen to prejudice the prevention or detection of crime by making The National Archives’ computer system more vulnerable to hacking. There is an overwhelming public interest in keeping government computer systems secure which would be served by non-disclosure. This would outweigh any benefits of release. It has therefore been decided that the balance of the public interest lies clearly in favour of withholding the material on this occasion.
Further guidance on section 31 can be found here:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1207/law-enforcement-foi-section-31.pdf