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From January 2005, the public has a general right of access to all types of recorded information held by public authorities, including local authorities.

When a person requests a piece of information from an authority, the authority has a duty to disclose that information, if it holds it and it is not subject to any legally defined exemptions.

Please note that all requests must be in writing (email is acceptable). After receiving your request, the council will:

• reply to you within 20 working days and tell you who is dealing with your request
• provide you with advice and assistance should you need it
• we will not charge fees initially. If the information costs more than a certain amount to collect the Council may not be able to provide it
• we do not need to release the information if an exemption applies. The Council will give you details of the exemptions relied on. Some of the exemptions will take the Council longer than 20 days to look at so we will give an estimate of when a decision will be made

About the publication scheme

Knowsley Council already makes a large amount of information available to its citizens in an open and friendly way. Information is available from the Council’s website, and also in leaflets and many other publications available from our Libraries, One Stop Shops and other locations across the Borough. The Council wants Knowsley’s residents to have access to all the information they need in order that they can become involved in the Council's work.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, local authorities such as Knowsley Council and other public bodies are required to produce a publication scheme which sets out the types of information available. Our publication scheme document has been approved by the Information Commissioner, who is responsible for promoting good practice and ensuring compliance with Freedom of Information and Data Protection Laws.

This document says what information will be published as a matter of course, the manner in which that information is published and if there is a charge for receiving that information.

A copy of Adobe Acrobat reader is needed to enable access to the PDF document(s) above. If you do not already have this click to Download Adobe Acrobat Reader (Link opens in a new window) now.

To read the PDF document with a screen reader please visit Access Adobe website (Link opens in a new window), which provides useful tools and resources. Adobe also has a free online conversion tool for PDFs.