Calculating reasonable charges

• Applicants are entitled to have access to documents at the lowest reasonable cost. No charges should be imposed for searching for documents. A charge must be waived or reduced if the applicant is impecunious. "Impecunious" is not defined in the FOI Act. It means "having little or no money". The meaning of "impecunious" includes being unable reasonably to afford the access charges. The purpose of the legislation is to seek to avoid hardship to a person who does not have enough money to pay the associated charges.

Charges may be imposed for:

• consulting with third parties, if necessary

• examining documents, exercising judgement and making a decision on access

• deleting exempt matter where appropriate

• preparing a notice of decision

• providing access in the manner required

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Writing a proper Notice of Decision

• The onus is on the agency to justify any decisions that are adverse to the rights of access given to an applicant. The decision-maker should:

• identify and describe the documents

• explain why those documents or parts of documents are exempt

• specify which exemption clause or clauses applies

• provide reasons to show why the documents in question are claimed to be exempt - do not simply refer to an exemption clause... explicitly document your reasons for using it.

• The notice of decision should be the result of a documented process of consideration and decision-making by an agency. An applicant must be able to understand which documents are within the ambit of the access application (number and type) and, where access is refused, all of the steps of the reasoning process involved in the agency deciding that the documents are exempt.

• Each document must be identified and a decision made in respect of each of those documents. Whilst each page of a multi-page document may be a "document" under the FOI Act, nothing is to be gained by treating each page separately if the document as a whole falls within the ambit of a request. Attachments should be treated as separate documents and a decision made about access to each attachment.

• The schedule should list the documents by number (eg. 1-10; 1-200 as the case may be) commencing in chronological order. If the access application consists of several discrete requests, the documents should be listed in chronological order for each discrete part of the request. In addition, the schedule should contain the following information:

• the date of each document

• the author and the person to whom it is addressed (or the title if it is a report or a submission)

• a brief but sufficient description of the document or its contents

• the exemption/s claimed for each document, or part of a document

Reasons for Decision