FOI or EIR? — Which Regime Your Request Falls Under
Getting the regime wrong costs you the strongest arguments you have. The EIR reaches private bodies FOIA cannot touch, carries a presumption in favour of disclosure, and has no equivalent of the section 12 cost ceiling.
Last reviewed: Next review due:
EIR vs FOI Selector
Should you make your request under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) or the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)?
The EIR applies whenever information is ‘environmental’ in nature — and crucially, it covers private companies carrying out public functions related to the environment (e.g. water companies, energy utilities), which FOIA does not. Answer the questions below to find out which regime applies to your request.
Does the information relate to the state of the environment (air, water, soil, biodiversity, landscape, or protected sites)?
How it works
- Six sequential yes/no questions taken from the regulation 2(1) definition: the state of the environment; factors affecting it such as energy, noise, emissions, waste and radiation; measures and policies affecting it; impact assessments and the economic analyses behind environmental decisions; human health as affected by environmental conditions; and registers of bodies holding environmental information.
- The first Yes ends the questionnaire and returns EIR. Only six consecutive Nos return FOIA. Answers already given are shown as chips as you go.
- The EIR result explains the two differences it treats as decisive — that the EIR reaches any person carrying out functions of public administration in relation to the environment, including water, energy and waste companies, and that exceptions must be read narrowly against a presumption of disclosure — plus the 20-working-day deadline extendable to 40 for complex requests.
- The FOIA result gives the 20-working-day deadline and suggests citing both regimes in the request when you are unsure, since the authority must tell you which applies.
When to use it
- Before writing any request touching planning, pollution, flooding, waste, transport emissions or energy.
- When the information is held by a water company, an energy supplier or a waste contractor — FOIA does not reach them, the EIR may.
- When an authority has refused under a FOIA exemption and the material looks environmental, which would make the refusal the wrong test entirely.
- When a health story turns on an environmental cause, where question five is the one that catches it.
What it does not do
- The EIR outcome now links to dedicated EIR guidance (/foi/eir-specific-requests) rather than the FOIA builder. Only the FOIA outcome still points at “Build FOIA Request”, and that builder writes a letter citing FOIA 2000 and section 10 with no EIR wording.
- That FOIA-outcome button is still an in-page anchor (/tools#foi-builder) to the FOI builder as it appears on the /tools index, so from a standalone tool page it may not go anywhere at all.
- One Yes ends the questionnaire, so the answer reflects the first category you matched rather than the mix. Requests often straddle both regimes, and where they do the environmental part is EIR and the rest is FOIA — the authority must handle each under the right one.
- It never asks who holds the information. The EIR applies to public authorities and to bodies carrying out functions of public administration under regulation 2(2); a private company with no such function is outside both regimes.
- It does not flag the practical differences that most often decide a request: an EIR request can be made verbally, and there is no section 12 cost ceiling under the EIR — an authority has to argue regulation 12(4)(b) manifestly unreasonable instead. Scotland is not covered either; there the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 and FOISA apply, policed by the Scottish Information Commissioner.
More tools
This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.