Request information from us

Before you request information from us

We publish a lot of information about the work we do and about the ICO as a public authority. There are a number of ways to access this information:

Our guide to information explains the information we publish and how to access it. The most popular information links are:
You can check to see if we have given the information before as a result of someone else’s request. We post these responses on our Disclosure Log.
If you don’t find what you are looking for and would like to ask us about our work you can contact us.
You can also write to us to ask for information we hold.

What information do we hold

We only hold recorded information which directly links with casework and investigations involving data protection issues. We are not a library holding all public information. If you want information held by a public authority, for example your local council, NHS Trust, or central government, then you need to make your request directly to them. You should be able to find information how to do this on their websites.

Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides a right of access to a wide range of information held by public authorities, including the ICO.

The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 provide a right of access to information relating to the environment, which is held by public authorities, including the ICO.

Personal information

You can also ask us for personal information we might hold about you. We will usually only hold information about you if you've dealt with us before; we typically keep this information for a maximum of two years.

It is not necessary to copy the ICO into emails when making a request for information. However, if a request is not responded within the legal statutory time frame, a complaint can be made to the ICO.

What to include

When you ask us for information please try to be as clear as possible. This will help us understand and respond promptly to your request. Please specify what you want and supply relevant case numbers, if you have them. We might ask you for clarification if we are not sure what you are looking for.

If we do hold the information we will provide it unless we think it should be withheld for reasons covered by the exemptions in the legislation. For more information about why information may be withheld please read the guidance on our website.

How to make a request

You can use this link to make a request to us for information.

You can also write to us at:

Information Access Team
Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK9 5AF

Alternatively, Information Access can be contacted by email. Please note that this email address is only to be used for writing to us to ask for information we hold. It should not be used to make general enquires or to send reminders in respect of other parts of the business. If you are wanting to do that, please head to the Cysylltwch â ni page for the relevant contact information.

In addition you can also make a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request through WhatDoTheyKnow (WDTK). When a request is made through WDTK, the response is automatically published on the WDTK website.

Dealing with your request

If you write to us about our work as a public authority, we will deal with these requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. If you are asking for environmental information, we will consider this under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. For further advice about requesting information effectively, see our guidance on how to access official information. We will respond to your request within 20 working days.

You can also ask us for personal information we might hold about you. We deal with these requests under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). We respond to requests within 28 calendar days.

The GDPR also provides you with other rights relating to personal information that we hold about you. You can see more about these rights and how to make a request about them in the ‘Your data protection rights’ section of our privacy notice.

For information about what we do with personal data see our privacy notice.

Information access manual

This Manual has been written for use by the Information Access Team at the ICO to assist us in our handling of requests we receive under information rights legislation, including, but not limited to, the FOIA, EIR and data protection legislation. It contains specific information about the processes and programmes we use during the lifespan of an information request. Whilst it may provide insight as to how the ICO manages the requests it receives, other organisations should not treat it as a set of instructions. The Manual outlines the processes that work for us given the size and structure of our Information Access team – the same processes may not work in other organisations. It is not intended to cover every eventuality we may come across, but rather to provide a consistent foundation to guide our staff and that underpins our request handling processes. We have made a small number of redactions to the Manual – these relate to information that is inappropriate to share publicly including file paths and internal email addresses – but they do not detract from the content or principles of the Manual.

The templates you see below are currently used by the ICO to assist us in responding to information rights requests. They have been written for the purposes of the ICO as a controller and public authority and may not be suitable for those of other organisations in the exact format you see them here. These templates are tailored and expanded upon according to the circumstances of each individual case. We should point out that some templates feature exemptions that relate to the ICO’s function as a regulator and will not necessarily be usable by other organisations. We are sharing the Manual and templates to align with our ICO25 commitment to promote openness, transparency and accountability, and to provide an additional resource that organisations may find helpful to their own request handling processes.

We hope that the Manual and templates are of interest but advise that it is the responsibility of any organisation that uses them to ensure that they comply with current legislation.

Information request handling performance

We're making improvements to how we share data on our website, starting with the information request compliance data sets. We'd love to hear your thoughts on your experience.

Please take five minutes to complete this survey [opens in new tab] to tell us about your experience of accessing and using our information request compliance data sets.

Below is a link to data about the information requests made to the ICO under both the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and data protection legislation. We will update these reports at the end of each quarter. The data provided reflects the data on the date it was extracted and can be subject to change over time. We are not able to provide a dataset for the period Q4 2019/20. This is due to a case management system change during this period.