The Freedom of Information Act 2000 sets out the obligations that public authorities have when it comes to providing information.
These obligations apply to the Bank of England, with the exception of our activities in the following areas:
Under the Freedom of Information Act we are obliged to have a ‘publication scheme’ setting out certain types of information. However, the Information Commissioner’s Office, which is the independent regulator for the Freedom of Information Act, has recognised that websites have now come to fulfil the purpose of a publication scheme.
The Information Commissioner’s model publication scheme sets out some of the classes of information that it expects public authorities to follow, which are:
We are of the view that, as the location of all proactive information we make available, our website constitutes our publication scheme.
Most of this information is also available in our Annual Report.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, you can make a request for information you think we might hold that is not available on our website.
To do this, you must:
We aim to answer requests for information within 20 working days of receiving them. If you are not happy with the handling of your request or our response, you should write to the Information Access Team Manager at the address above.
We have a working level agreement with the Financial Conduct Authority which sets out certain principles to be followed for handling requests under the Freedom Information Act which are of mutual interest. These include liaison on requests that are both conduct and prudential related and transferring requests to ensure that they are handled by the relevant authority.
Individuals have a legal right to make a request to see a copy of the personal data that an organisation holds on them under data protection laws. This is known as a ‘subject access request’.
For more information, email data-protection@bankofengland.co.uk or write to the Information Access Team (TS-Mz), Bank of England, Threadneedle Street, London EC2R 8AH or telephone 020 3461 4878.We publish details of our performance on handling requests for information made under the Freedom of Information Act and the Environmental Information Regulations. We publish these compliance statistics quarterly with a 3 month time lag.