This section has been started to detail FOI and DPA issues and advice.
If you have an area of knowledge within these fields please feel free to add what you know.
As we have already learned secrets are bad for the public good however in 2006 we descovered that the location of new dental surgeries is to be kept secret.
It was for this reason that in 2000 to 2002 a new set of laws collectivly called the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) were created.
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (2000 c. 36) is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level, with the exception of Scottish bodies, which are covered by the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (2002 asp. 13).
The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (2000 c. 36) is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United Kingdom on a national level. It is an Act of Parliament that introduces a public "right to know" in relation to public bodies. The act implements a manifesto commitment of the Labour Party in the 1997 general election. The final version of the act is believed to have been diluted from that proposed while Labour was in opposition. The full provisions of the act came into force on 1 January 2005. The act itself is Crown copyright but can be found at the Web site of the Stationery Office.
from the wikipedia
Any person can request information under the act; this includes legal entities such as companies. There is no special format for a request. Applicants do not need to mention the act when making a request. Applicants do not have to give a reason for their request.
There are three relativly unusal clauses given below (edit version of the wikipedia article)
Requests by individuals for access to their own personal information falls outside the act, and will continue to be dealt with under the Data Protection Act 1998. Which means you may have to pay one or more fees.
Requests for information about matters concerning the environment are dealt with by the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. Those regulations, while similar to the FOIA do differ in a number of ways.
There is no procedure whereby third parties can challenge a decision by a public authority to disclose information: for instance, if a commercial organisation provides information to a public authority, and the authority discloses that information in response to a FOI Act request, the commercial organisation has no right of appeal against that decision.