5 - The Environmental Information Regulations

Summary

Introduction

In the UK, the FOIA is not the only law providing access to information held by public authorities. There are many rules requiring authorities to make inform - ation available, many of which are described in the following chapters. The most significant of these are the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR).

The EIR provide a right of access to environmental information held by public authorities. They are the ‘Cinderella’ right to information – they tend to be ignored in favour of their better known relation. In the UK they were brought into force on the same day as the right of access under the FOIA and, under standably, attention at the time focused on the Act. Indeed for most authorities, the FOIA is much more significant. Government statistics for 2017 show that across all monitored bodies, only 3% of requests were handled under the EIR. However, the EIR is much more significant for some authorities – the proportion of requests dealt with under the EIR by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was over 31%. Outside central government, a significant proportion of information requests made to local authorities is covered by the EIR, given councils’ role in planning, waste disposal and other activities designed to manage local impact on the environment.

The EIR have their origin in a European directive and an international agreement so regulations providing access to environmental information have been adopted in other European countries. Scotland has adopted its own regulations on environmental information just as it has its own FOI Act. Outside Europe, access to this information is normally covered by the main FOI law.

It is important for FOI officers to be able to identify when to apply the EIR rather than the FOIA. There are many similarities, but also significant differences between the two laws. In particular, it is important to apply the right law when information needs to be withheld for any reason.

Why do we have EIR?

Unlike the FOIA, which is purely UK legislation and over which the government had a choice, the EIR had to be implemented as a result of a European directive. This in itself was designed to give effect to a previous agreement called the Aarhus Convention, named after the city in Denmark where it was reached in 1998.