ICO's blog on its information rights work

Colleagues from the ICO’s FOI Directorate share their experiences and involvement in raising awareness of our regulation of access to information legislation.

Bitesize tools to help FOI practitioners stay ahead of challenges - 3 March 2025

We’re here to help organisations get transparency and accountability right.  

Read the full blog from Deborah Clark the ICO's Upstream Regulation Manager, and get links to the new bitesize guidance

Transparency must be the default position for water companies - 16 December 2024

Public interest in water companies is higher than ever, with firms across the UK facing scrutiny over sewage discharges into lakes, rivers and the sea.

Read the full blog from Warren Seddon, Director of FOI at the ICO.

Advice to local authorities facing financial restrictions - 28 November 2024

Managing request volumes and issuing timely responses to requests for information are crucial to complying with your information access obligations.

Read the full blog from Terna Waya, Senior Upstream Regulation Officer, Freedom of Information and Transparency and Ribia Nisa, Team Manager, Public Advice and Data Protection Complaints Services

Empowering young people to learn more about their local environment - 05 November 2024

Did you know that no matter how old you are, you can ask public authorities about a wide range of topics that affect your day-to-day life and where you live?

Read the full blog from Aiden Clarkson, Senior Upstream Regulation Officer

Supporting public authorities to be open and transparent - 31 July 2024

Around this time last year, I wrote about our new Upstream Regulation team and our focus on supporting public authorities to be open and accountable with the public they serve.

Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, our Upstream Regulation manager

Understanding what information people commonly request from public authorities - 03 June 2024

People can use the WhatDoTheyKnow (WDTK) website to submit Freedom of Information (FOI) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests to public organisations.

Working with WDTK, we have analysed a sample of more than 150,000 requests made during 2022 and identified common themes in the information that has been asked for.

Read the full blog from Aiden Clarkson, Senior Upstream Regulation Officer - FOI and Transparency

Director’s update: the FOI year in review - 25 April 2024

It’s fair to say that it’s been a heck of a year for the FOI team.

We’ve received more than 8,000 complaints – against a previous high of 6,418 in 2018/19.

Read the full blog from Warren Seddon, ICO Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency, about the year in review for the FOI team.

Are you clear on clarifying information requests? - 10 January 2024

Public organisations hold a huge amount of information across a wide range of areas. That’s why it’s vital that practitioners understand exactly what people are asking for when dealing with requests under the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act or the Environmental Information Regulations (EIR).

Read the full blog from Sophie Turner, the ICO's Senior Upstream Regulation Officer for FOI and Transparency.

What to consider when using online forms to receive information requests - 15 November 2023

As freedom of information (FOI) practitioners, you have a responsibility to help requesters clarify what it is they want from you. You need to support them to submit requests in a way that enables you to provide a comprehensive and timely response.

Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, the ICO's Upstream Regulation Manager.

Director’s update – Delivering more strategic regulation in 12 months than in the lifetime of FOI - 10 August 2023

Just over a year ago, I announced that we had published our new Freedom of Information (FOI) regulatory manual, which set out our approach to more strategic enforcement of FOI in line with our statutory powers. Now, 12 months on, I want to take the opportunity to reflect on what our new way of doing things has helped us to accomplish.

Read the full blog from Warren Seddon, ICO Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency, one year on from the new approach.

Helping public organisations to get information access right - 20 July 2023

In ICO25, we established our strategic enduring objective to promote openness, transparency and accountability. This also supports the Commissioner’s duty under section 47 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ‘promote the following of good practice by public authorities’ in relation to FOIA and its Codes of Practice.

Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, the ICO's Upstream Regulation Manager.

Director’s Update – celebrating success and challenging ourselves for the future - 28 March 2023

It’s just over a year since my first blog when I said that I wanted to keep you up to date on how we are improving our service, including how we will tackle our backlog of cases.

So as we approach the end of the financial year, I want to take this opportunity to share some good news on where we have got to on the latter, before moving onto what this means for our efforts to improve the service we deliver.

Read the full blog from Warren Seddon, ICO Director of Freedom of Information and Transparency.

New FOI resources to support public authorities - 2 February 2023

We’ve been working hard, following the commitments made in our ICO25 plan, to make improvements to our Freedom of Information (FOI) services. We want to enhance the experience and outcomes for people making FOI requests and also support public authorities to be transparent and accountable about the decisions they make.

We have developed a suite of products to help public bodies improve their compliance with freedom of information law and respond to information requests without delay. That includes resources to assess your compliance proactively, an action plan for improving services that can be easily adapted to different circumstances, and toolkits that can help public authorities comply with their legal duties.

Read the full blog from Deborah Clark, Upstream Regulation Manager.