FOI Request Builder — Draft a FOIA 2000 Request Letter
Most FOI requests are refused or narrowed because of how they are written, not because of what they ask for. A vague scope invites a section 12 refusal; a precise list of records is much harder to bat away.
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FOI Request Builder
Generate a formal Freedom of Information Act 2000 request letter, tailored to the type of public authority. Fill in the details and copy or print the ready-to-send letter.
Tip: WhatDoTheyKnow.com publishes requests and responses — great for researching how similar requests were handled and following up on published data.
How it works
- Seven inputs: authority name, authority type, subject or topic, an optional from and to date, a free-text list of the records you want with one item per line, and a preferred format (Excel/CSV, PDF, Word, plain text or as held).
- It assembles a letter dated today — read from your browser after the page loads rather than baked in when the site was built — with a salutation chosen from the authority type, an opening that cites the Freedom of Information Act 2000, your topic and date range, and your record list rendered as bullets.
- The closing paragraph asks for confirmation of receipt and a response within 20 working days under section 10, and requires that any withheld information is accompanied by the exemption relied on and, where applicable, a public interest test assessment.
- A format line is added: “as held” produces a request for the information in the format in which it is held, anything else asks for that format where possible.
- Copy puts the letter on your clipboard; Print opens it in a new window with the text HTML-escaped, in a serif font at a fixed 800px width — there is no A4 page-size rule, so what you get is the browser’s own print layout.
When to use it
- Sending your first request to an authority you have not dealt with before and want the wording to be unarguable.
- Converting a rough list of “things we want to know” into a scoped set of named records.
- When a previous request was refused as too broad and you are resubmitting with a date range and a record list.
- Teaching a newsroom or a class what a properly framed FOI request looks like.
What it does not do
- The “tailored to the type of public authority” claim amounts to the salutation only. NHS trust gives “Dear Information Governance Team”, university gives “Dear Information Compliance Team”, central government gives “Dear Freedom of Information Officer”, and everything else gives “Dear FOI Officer”. No deadline, cost figure or other wording changes.
- It always cites FOIA 2000. Scottish public authorities are covered by FOISA 2002 instead, and environmental information falls under the EIR 2004 whoever holds it — run the FOI vs EIR selector first if there is any environmental dimension.
- The signature block is left as [Your Name] and [Your Email Address] placeholders. Section 8 only makes a request valid if it states the applicant’s real name and an address for correspondence, so fill those in — and note a pen name does not satisfy section 8.
- It drafts and nothing more. It does not send the request, does not track the deadline, and does not check whether the body you are writing to is covered by FOIA at all.
More tools
This is one of the free tools on UK JournoHub. See the full tools index for the rest.
Related guides
Primary sources
- FOIA 2000 s.8 — what makes a request valid— legislation.gov.uk
- FOIA 2000 s.10 — time for compliance— legislation.gov.uk