Fee guidance
The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 state that, as was the case under the 1992 Regulations, public authorities may charge for environmental information and this charge should be "reasonable".
Charges should not be made for allowing an applicant access to public registers or for an applicant to examine the information requested. If payment is requested this should be asked for in advance and a 60 day period is allowed for receipt of payment. A public authority must make available its schedule of charges and should also inform applicants if a charge is to be waived.
The Defra guidance refers to the FOI fee regime and aligns its guidance to the FOI fee regime where possible. This suggests that the same appropriate limits can be used for EIR requests ie, that all requests below £600 for central government and below £450 for other public authorities can be provided free of charge. This enables EIR requests to be treated in exactly the same way as FOI requests below the appropriate limits.
Adopting the same charging system below the appropriate FOI limits gives a more transparent and unified approach and is likely to be simpler for authorities to manage. It is, however, up to each public authority to decide whether to treat FOI and EIR requests in the same way below the appropriate FOI limit.
Public authorities can set their own reasonable charges and treat FOI and EIR requests differently if they choose to do so.
Above these FOI appropriate limits differences apply. An EIR request cannot be refused solely on cost grounds. Nor is it advisable to classify any request over the limit as "manifestly unreasonable " solely on the grounds of cost.
The recommended approach, as the regulations set out in paragraph 9, is to proactively manage the request, advising and explaining the legislation, making it clear that requests over the limit could be charged and suggesting that the request be refined, reduced, simplified, offering that part of the request that is easily available etc. to bring it into the FOI free of charge category.
However, if all this fails, and there are no other exemptions which apply, and the only issue is the cost or resource implications of the request, the public authority must consider whether to charge a reasonable amount and meet the request (or provide it free of charge).
Alternatively the public authority should consider exemption 12(4)(c) of the regulations and must decide where the balance of public interest lies in supplying or refusing the information.
There can be no hard and fast rule and each case must be judged on its merits.
The EIR legislation also allows for organisations such as the Met Office to continue to charge for Environmental Information provided that a schedule of charges is published.
Page last modified: 9 October 2007
Page published: 23 February 2005