Freedom of Information Act 2000

The clock

20 business days

20 working days from receipt to respond; extendable a 'reasonable' period where the public-interest balance on a qualified exemption is still being weighed.

The MoD generally answers inside the 20 working days; public-interest extensions are routine on defence and security files.

Reading the statute itself

The text of this one is not reproduced here: foreign legislation is published under its own country’s copyright rules, so it is linked instead. Everything on this page — the deadline, the appeal path, the fee standard — is Aletheca’s summary of that text, and the official source is one click away.

• legislation.gov.uk — Freedom of Information Act 2000link checked 2026-08-31https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/36/contents

If they refuse

Appeal deadline

Not specified

Appeal route

Internal review by the authority, then complaint to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), then the First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights).

Litigation

First-tier Tribunal (Information Rights); Upper Tribunal on a point of law.

Fees and expedition

Fee-waiver standard

Requests are free. An authority may refuse where compliance would exceed the cost limit — £600 for central government, £450 otherwise, rated at £25 an hour.

Aletheca argues this on every request it files here. A service that publishes every page it receives, free, to a public archive has an unusually strong showing — considerably stronger than a private requester’s.

Exemptions it allows

• s.23 Security bodies
• s.24 National security
• s.26 Defence
• s.27 International relations
• s.40 Personal data
• s.12 Cost limit

Quirks worth knowing

The MoD's UFO desk closed on 1 December 2009 and its files were transferred to The National Archives — the historic records are a TNA request, not an MoD one.