Schedule of charges

Information that is available on Bedford Borough Council’s website is free to copy.

There may be charges for some publications. If so, we will tell you that there is a charge and how much it is.

There is no charge to view Public Registers.

Photocopying, printing and postage

We are entitled to charge for photocopying, printing and postage if we need to send information to you. This includes information we send to you in reply to a Freedom of Information request, and information that we make readily available through the council’s Publication Scheme.

All charges are payable in advance of your request being processed.

Costs for Black and White copies are:

• 10p per single side A4 paper
• 20p per single side A3 paper

Black and white copies are usually done on 80gsm paper.

Freedom of Information Act 2000 requests

The Council is entitled to refuse to deal with a request, or to charge for the time taken, if it will cost more than £450 to complete.

The rate charged is £25 per hour therefore this equates to 18 hours of work or more (2½ days) to deal with a request. When estimating how long it will take to process a request we take into account the time it will take us to locate, retrieve and extract the information requested. These costs are in addition to any costs for photocopying, printing and postage.

All charges are payable in advance of your request being processed.

Environmental Information Regulations requests

Public authorities are entitled to charge for complying with environmental information requests as long as the amount to be charged is ‘reasonable’. The charge must not exceed the cost of producing the information.

Please see guidance from the Information Commissioner on charging for environmental information here.

When a charge is involved, where possible we will suggest alternative information that may be of interest to you or ways to refine your request that could reduce the fee. In exceptional circumstances we may decide to reduce or waive our usual fee. If appropriate, the fee will be calculated based on the cost of our responding to the request.

This includes:

Staff time

The cost of staff time will be charged at £25 per hour in accordance with the recommended hourly charge under the Freedom of Information Act when requests exceed the fees limit in that Act.

This hourly (or part thereof) charge includes the time required to locate and retrieve the requested information. It does not include the initial cost of determining whether we hold the requested information, or time taken to decide whether the requested information can be released.

Disbursements

Photocopying will be charged at 10p per A4 Black and White sheet. Postage costs if appropriate will be charged at cost.