Cabinet Office Homepage

Cabinet Office website
|

Main navigation

In section navigation

Publication Scheme

Part Two: Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

Background

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) received Royal Assent on 30 November 2000 and came fully into force on 1 January 2005. The FOIA gives the public the right of access to information held by public authorities and imposes obligations on public authorities to make this information available. This obligation is subject to a range of exemptions.

The Lord Chancellor announced in the House of Lords on 13 November 2001 that the FOIA would be implemented in stages, beginning in November 2002, with central government issuing publication schemes under Section 19 of the Act. This was followed by other types of public authority doing the same. The publication schemes set out what information they will make available and how the public can gain access to it. The final stage of implementation, in January 2005, gives individual members of the public the right of access to information.

Viewing the Act

You can read the full FOIA, including explanatory notes on the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) website.

Guidance on the public’s rights under the Act is available from the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) on the DCA website or by post.

Department for Constitutional Affairs
Information Rights Division
Selborne House
54 -60 Victoira Street
LONDON
SW1E 6QW

The Cabinet Office Publication Scheme

Under Section 19 of the FOIA, the Cabinet Office must maintain, a publication scheme, stating:

In the context of the FOIA, to ‘publish’ means to ‘make publicly available’.

This publication scheme will be reviewed and updated as necessary, approximately twice a year.

The classes of information which the Cabinet Office will publish, are set out in detail in this Publication Scheme under Part Four: Information published by the Cabinet Office. The classes are:

For a paper copy of this Publication Scheme, contact the Histories, Openness and Records Unit in the Cabinet Office, using the contact details below.

How to access publications

The Cabinet Office publishes a large volume of material, some of which is updated frequently. It would therefore be impractical for this Publication Scheme to list individual publications. Instead, it states what information is:

As a minimum, the Cabinet Office will always make the latest version of a publication available. For some publications, previous versions will also be available. You can find details under Part Four – Information published by the Cabinet Office.

Costs

Most of the information referred to in this publication scheme is available free of charge from this website. Some documents on the website are published in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). To view or print PDF documents, you will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader software, which you can download free of charge from the Adobe website.

If you request a paper copy of a document which is available on this website, there will be no charge for a single paper copy. There may be a charge for multiple copies.

If a document is not available free of charge this will be stated, along with advice on how to access a copy, in the details of the information class which it belongs to. Anyone who does not have access to the internet can contact the Histories, Openness and Records Unit (HORU) for information about a particular class or publication. (See the contact details below)

Publication schemes are intended to encourage public organisations to be proactive in making information they hold more readily available to the public and to contribute to a culture of greater openness. Not all of the information held by the Cabinet Office can or should, however, be included in this scheme.

Certain information, such as information relating to security, may be exempt under the requirements of the FOIA, which means that it will not be made available to the public. Such information may be edited out of documents published under this scheme.

Contact details

If you are unsure which part of the Cabinet Office is responsible for the type of information you need you can contact the the Cabinet Office FOI Team.


FOI Team
Cabinet Office
Room 118
70 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2AS

Copyright

The Cabinet Office is a Crown body and the information it produces is subject to Crown copyright, which is managed by the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI). The material listed in this Publication Scheme is covered by Crown copyright unless stated otherwise. Accessing documents under the FOIA does not give the person or organisation receiving it the automatic right to reuse the documents in any way that would infringe copyright. This would include making multiple copies or publishing and issuing copies to the public.

Under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (Sections 29 and 30), you may reproduce brief extracts of the material for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting.

For details of the arrangements for reusing Crown copyright material, contact the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) or visit the OPSI website.

OPSI Licensing Division
St Clements House
2-16 Colegate
NORWICH
NR3 1BQ

Phone: 01603 621000
Fax: 01603 723000
Email: hmsolicensing@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk
Website: www.opsi.gov.uk

For authorisation to reuse copyright material not owned by the Crown, you should contact the copyright holders direct. If you have any questions about copyright, contact OPSI in the first instance.

Under the fair dealing provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (Sections 29 and 30), you may reproduce brief extracts of material covered by parliamentary copyrights, for the purposes of research, private study, criticism, review and news reporting.

[Top]

In section navigation