Freedom of Information

Introduction

The Freedom of Information (FOI) Act gives any person the legal right to ask for and be given any information which is held by a public authority.

The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), as part of the health service, constitutes a public authority as defined by the FOI Act.

UK National Screening Committee Policy

The UK NSC will follow the guidance on appropriate limits and fees set out on the Ministry of Justice website. Where necessary, a fee may be charged to cover costs associated with formatting, reproducing or posting requested materials.

Note that some materials are exempt under the FOA Act, for example:

where disclosure might be harmful to important public interest
where disclosure is prohibited by statute
where responding to the request might involve providing personal information about other individuals
where disclosure might breach a duty of confidentiality

Assessing requests for information can therefore be a balancing act but where requested information cannot be provided a full explanation will be given and help provided to reformulate the request into a permissible form.

An introduction to exemptions can be found on the Ministry of Justice website.

Publication Scheme

A lot of information is already available on this website without the need for a specific request. Please use the publications page, search functionality and/or the A-Z index to see if what you are looking for already exists.

The UK NSC is committed to being an open and transparent organisation and as such is constantly publishing more information on this website.

Making a Request under the FOI Act

Contact us with your request, giving as much detail as possible, putting 'FOI Request' in the subject line and using the General Query option. We will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible but please bear in mind there may sometimes be a short delay.

Further Information

Public information on Freedom of Information can be found on the Directgov website. More details on making an FOI request are available on the website of the Information Commissioner's Office.