Freedom of information and environmental information requests

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) give any individual or organisation, regardless of age or location, the right to request recorded information from public authorities. You can use FOIA and EIR to request information from North East Lincolnshire Council.

Any person making a written request for information, must be informed whether or not the public authority holds that information and if held be supplied with that information, subject to any procedural conditions and any exemptions as set out in the legislation.

Further information about costs can be found in our Access to Information Policy (PDF, 201KB) .

Submit a request

Before you make a request

We already make a great deal of information available to you, by publishing it on our website or allowing people to inspect it.

Our Publication Scheme provides a guide to the current information we routinely publish or intend to publish. It aims to help you understand what information is already available to you without the need to make a request, how to find it / access it and whether a charge applies for it.

Supporting our Publication Scheme is our data sets list, which provides links to the information we published through the Local Government Transparency Code 2015 or is requested regularly, as well as our North East Lincolnshire Data Observatory.

NELincs Data

Please check our Publication Scheme, North East Lincolnshire Data Observatory and Data Sets List before you make a request.

Not all information about North East Lincolnshire is held by the Council, and to obtain this information you may need to ask another organisation, such as:

for police and crime statistics and information, Humberside Police
for health statistics and information, Humber and Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust, Care Plus Group, Focus Independent Ault Social Care CIC or Navigo Health and Social Care CIC
for school and pupil statistics and information, our local schools and academies

Personal data about you

Access to Personal Data about you is outside the scope of the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations, if you require this information then you need to make a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act and the UK General Data Protection Regulation.

To make a Subject Access Request please go to our Data Protection page

Will I receive all the information I request?

Not necessarily. Responses under FOIA and EIR are not just provided to the requester but made to the ‘world at large’. So there are exemptions and exceptions within the legislation to ensure a balance is achieved between the right to know, the right to privacy and the delivery of effective government.

If we apply any exemptions or exceptions, we will explain which exemption or exception applies and set out our reasons for withholding the information, and if necessary, explain why the refusal is in the public interest. We will also explain your right of appeal.

Exemptions and exceptions include:

the information is reasonably available through other means, for example, such as the Land Registry, or online, or accessible under other legislation.
we intend to publish the information in the future.
the law says we must not release it.
disclosure would breach confidentiality or contravene Data Protection legislation.
disclosure would or would likely harm or prejudice commercial interests, the effective conduct of public affairs, law enforcement, health and safety.
Legal Professional Privilege applies.

We may also refuse your request if

For FOIA request if the cost of providing the requested information would take longer than 18 hours to provide, but we will provide you with advice and assistance on how to refine your request before we do this.
It is a repeat request.
We consider your request vexatious in nature.

Further details can be found in the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations or on the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Making a request for information

For your request to be valid, you must:

make it writing for FOIA requests, this includes emails
include your name and a contact address for correspondence, this can be a postal or an email address
provide a description of the information you are requesting

You can make any of the following methods

By using our online form below, by email to [email protected]or by post to Freedom of Information Team, Municipal Offices, Town Hall Square, Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, DN31 1HU

Unfortunately, we cannot accept a Freedom of Information request verbally.

How you can help us deal with your request quickly

set out clearly the information you require – if your request is unclear and we need further details to establish if we hold the information, we will have to ask you for further clarification. The time frame for responding to your request will pause and will not restart until we receive the requested clarification from you.
avoid basing your request on assumptions or opinions, or mixing your request with complaints, comments, statements or service requests.
if appropriate, please specify a time period for the information you are requesting.
we can only provide you with the recorded information we hold so
we are not required to create or obtain new information in order to answer your request.
respond to requests for comments, opinions or views.

Submit a request

We reserve the right to publish a copy of the information we give you under FOIA or EIR on our website or by any other means.

Costs

We only charge for the provision of information where this is specifically allowed for under legislation or, to recover the costs of any photocopying, printing postage or other costs incurred in supplying the information.

If we plan to charge a fee for answering your request, we will tell you what the fee will be before we provide the information. You will have up to one months to pay the fee and once this is received in cleared funds, the information will be supplied to you.

Most information requests will generally be processed free of charge. We do not charge for officer time spent answering your request, but we are not obliged to provide you with information if it would involve more than 18 hours work. In these cases, we will contact you and provide assistance with how your request can be modified or narrowed. If you amend your request, this will be treated as a new request.

Further information about costs can be found in our Access to Information Policy (PDF, 201KB) .

Processing times

We will confirm receipt of your request.

If we need to ask for clarification about the information you want, the time for processing your request will be paused until the clarification is received.

We will always aim to respond to your information requests within 20 working days.

Year	Number of FOIA & EIR requests received	Percentage of requests answered within statutory timeframe
2025	1,434	99%
2024	1,295	99%
2023	1,187	95%
2022	1,083	94%
2021	1,010	94%

We may occasionally need to extend this time limit, such as to assess where the public interest lies in the application of an exemption of exception. If this happens, we will always let you know of this and explain why the delay is necessary. The extended timescales should not take more than 40 working days from receipt of your original request.

If you are unhappy with your response

If you are not happy with the handling or outcome of your request, you can ask for an internal review. We will send you details of how to do this when we respond to your request.

To help us deal with your internal review request effectively, we ask you to include the following:

your contact details.
the NELC reference number of your request.
an explanation of why you are not satisfied

We will acknowledge your internal review request within 5 working days of receiving it and usually provide you with a response within 20 working days of receiving your request. If this is not possible, we will inform you of this and the reasons.

If you are still unhappy with the decision of the internal review decision, we will tell you in our response about your right to request the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to investigate the handling of your request. Further information can be found on the ICO’s website.

Reusing our information

We comply with the Reuse of Public Sector Information Regulations and encourage your reuse of our information. Our approach is to be open and transparent and to treat all applications to reuse in a fair and non-discriminatory way.

‘Reuse’ means the use by a person (or company) of a document or information held by the council for a purpose other than the initial purpose for which it was produced.

Please note, that although the Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations give you a right of access to recorded information, they do not provide you with the right to reuse the information which is disclosed to you.

Some of the information we give you may be covered by our copyright, and some of it may be covered by other people’s copyright. If you copy, publish or re-use this information without express permission you may be breaching copyright.

To reuse North East Lincolnshire Council’s information you may need to contact us to request a licence.

You are free to use the material featured in this website, or the content from any council publication for your own purposes, including any non-commercial research, private study, reviews or news reporting.

Information that is published under the ‘Open Data and Transparency’ agenda on this site is immediately available for you to use under version 3 of the Open Government Licence. No registration is necessary.

Further information about what the Open Government Licence allows and does not allow you to do is available from the National Archives website.

When you use information under the Open Government Licence, you should include the following attribution: [Open data, North East Lincolnshire Council], licensed under the Open Government Licence.

To reuse information for a commercial purpose, not covered by the Open Government Licence you will need to contact the council to apply for a licence to reuse the information. You must do this in writing, either by email or post.

In your reuse of information request you must include:

Your name and contact details;
A full description of the material you wish to reuse (including the web address of the material if appropriate); and
A short description of your intended reuse of the material (including the website address you plan to publish the information if appropriate.

You should receive a reply within twenty working days confirming your licence or telling you if there is a problem (if for example, we do not own the copyright on some of the information).

To make your request write to us by email or post:

Email – [email protected]
Post – Freedom of Information Act Coordinator, Municipal Offices, Town Hall Square, Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, DN31 1HU

Further information about the Reuse of Public Sector Information Regulations and how applications are dealt with including rights of appeal can be found on the Information Commissioner’s website.