Fees

A fee may be charged which will be calculated according to the Fee Regulations. Where a fee is required, you will be advised and you must pay before the request is processed. If the fee is not paid within three months, the request will be considered lapsed.

Upon receiving a request, if the cost of complying with the request will be below £450 (the ‘Appropriate Amount’), the Council cannot charge you anything other than ‘disbursements’, which could include the cost of complying with your request if you want the information in a particular format, the cost of reproducing any document or postage and other forms of transmission, such as fax.

The Council will work out the ‘cost’ of complying with your request by estimating how long it is going to take us to do any or all of the following and cost the time at £25 per hour -

• determining whether we hold the information
• locating the information or a document which may contain the information
• retrieving the information, or a document which may contain the information
• extracting the information from a document containing it.

The Council cannot charge for time taken by staff to inform you that the information is or is not held.