By 
Updated 13 October, 3pm: Full Council approved the charge at its meeting on Monday 12 October. What else the council decided.
On this page
Stratford-on-Avon District Council will charge £38.62 an hour for environmental information requests that take its staff more than three and a half hours to answer. The Cabinet recommended the new charge on Monday 5 October, and Full Council approved it on Monday 12 October.
What are environmental information requests?
Alongside Freedom of Information requests, anyone can ask a council for environmental information under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. That covers things like planning, pollution, land, waste and the natural environment. The regulations favour disclosure and let councils charge only a “reasonable” amount, but unlike Freedom of Information they don’t set a fee.
How the charge works
- The first 3.5 hours of work on a request stay free.
- Time after that is charged at £38.62 an hour, plus the council’s standard printing and postage costs.
- The council says most requests are answered within 3.5 hours, so the charge will apply to only a minority.
The rate is the average hourly cost of the council’s information governance staff (£25.75), plus 50% for buildings, IT and other overheads. For comparison, the Freedom of Information fee of £25 an hour, charged after 18 hours, was set in 2000; the report says it would be £48.79 today with inflation.
Why now
The report says the charge reflects the real cost of complex requests and is meant to deter “excessive or frivolous” ones. In one case, a single person sent 19 requests that could normally have been handled as routine questions. A lot of environmental information, such as planning applications, is already published online. Stratford’s team also handles Warwick District Council’s information requests, and the council wants both to use the same policy.
What happens next
Full Council approved the policy on a show of hands on 12 October (recording). The rate and the 3.5-hour threshold would be reviewed in 2027, and the council will report how many requests the charge affects. The other decisions from the same meeting are in our Cabinet round-up, and more council stories are on our council news page.
Alex Harrington
Alex Harrington grew up in Stratford-upon-Avon and runs What's up, Stratford? as an independent guide to the town.
