Freedom of Information requests

The Freedom of Information Act is an Act of Parliament passed in 2000, which has been introduced and implemented in a rolling programme.

It has been created with the specific aims of:

• Promoting a culture of openness and accountability amongst public authorities by providing people with rights of access to the information held by them.
• Facilitate better public understanding of how public authorities carry out their duties, why they make the decisions they do and how they spend public money.

Things you can do

• Make a request for information. Before you do, please check the information is not available in our publication scheme.
• Browse our publication scheme.
• Contact the Information Commissioner's Office if you are not happy with the outcome of a request.

Make a request for information online

Our main obligations

• To create, maintain and adopt a Publication Scheme, which sets out the Classes of information which are held by the public authority which it will routinely make available, how the information can be obtained and whether there are any charges for the information. The Publication Scheme is both a commitment to make certain information available as well as being a guide to how the information can be obtained. The public is entitled to request to see a copy of the authority's Publication Scheme. 
• The council have adopted the new model publication scheme introduced by the Information Commissioners Office from 1st January 2009.  For any enquiries in relation to Freedom of Information or Data Protection please email informationrequests​@liverpool.gov.uk. 
• From the 1st January 2005, people have the right to request in writing information held by a public authority ("known as the right to know") and each public authority must comply with written requests for the information that it holds unless an exemption from disclosure applies.
• Public authorities will normally have a maximum of twenty working days to respond to the request; if a request is particularly complex and exemptions may need to be considered the council may need additional time to respond to the request, we will keep you informed if any delays are likely to occur.
• All public authorities are required to comply with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and a comprehensive list of the types of organisation, public bodies, local government, government generally as well as educational, and health services and providers which fall into the defined group of Public authorities can be found in Schedules, Schedule 1 within the Act itself.
• The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides a general right to anyone to access information held by a Public Body, subject to the consideration of 23 exemptions. These exemptions are either Absolute or Conditional the latter requiring the consideration of a Public Interest Test. There is also a Publication Scheme which provides information on what is already available to the Public and what can be made available.

Additional information and guidance

Further information on freedom of information can be found at the Information Commissioner's Office website.

Liverpool City Council has appointed an officer to deal with enquiries relating to the Freedom of Information Act, if you have any specific questions relating to this legislation, Liverpool City Councils' Publication Scheme or how to access information please email information​requests​@liverpool.gov.uk.