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Publication Scheme

Welwyn Parish Council (Council) will make available the information detailed in the following table in order to meet its commitments under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (EIR) using the model publication scheme produced by Information Commissioner’s Office model-publication-scheme.pdf (ico.org.uk)


Council is committed to providing as much information as possible on a routine basis and information categories will be regularly reviewed.

Council will make the information available unless:

  •  it does not hold the information
  • the information is exempt under one of the FOIA exemptions or EIR exceptions, or its release is prohibited by another statute;
  • the information is readily and publicly available from an external website; such information may have been provided by Council or on its behalf. Council must provide a direct link to that information;
  • the information is archived, out of date or otherwise inaccessible; or,
  • it would be impractical or resource-intensive to prepare the material for routine release.
Publishing datasets for re-use

Public authorities must publish under their publication scheme any dataset they hold that has been requested, together with any updated versions, unless they are satisfied that it is not appropriate to do so. So far as reasonably practicable, they must publish it in an electronic form that is capable of re-use.
If the dataset or any part of it is a relevant copyright work and the public authority is the only owner, the public authority must make it available for re-use under the terms of a specified licence. Datasets in which the Crown owns the copyright or the database rights are not relevant copyright works.
The Datasets Code of Practice recommends that public authorities make datasets available for re-use under the Open Government Licence.
The term ‘dataset’ is defined in section 11(5) of FOIA. The terms ‘relevant copyright work’ and ‘specified licence’ are defined in section 19(8) of FOIA. The ICO has published guidance on the dataset provisions in FOIA. This explains what is meant by “not appropriate” and “capable of re-use”.