ABERDEEN CITY COUNCIL
Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 – (FOISA) and the Environmental
Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs)
Requesting an Internal Review
If you are not satisfied with the response to your request for information, or the way in which
your request has been handled, you can request that ACC review our response. You should
do this within 40 working days of the receipt of this information. To request a review, please
write to or email us at:
Information Compliance Team
Customer Feedback
Customer Experience
Aberdeen City Council
3rd Floor North
Business Hub 17
Marischal College
Broad Street
ABERDEEN
AB10 1AQ
Email: xxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
Your request for review must include:
• your name and address (an email address is fine)
• the reference number for your original request for information
• your reason(s) for requesting a review
If required, a panel of senior officers who were not involved in the handling of your original
request will review ACC’s response. ACC will acknowledge receipt of your review request
and you will be informed of the outcome within 20 working days from ACC’s receipt of your
request for a review.
Appealing to the Scottish Information Commissioner for a decision
If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your request for an internal review, you can apply
directly to the Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner (OSIC) for a decision.
Generally, OSIC cannot make a decision unless you have been through the Council’s review
procedure. To make an application to OSIC, please write or email OSIC at:
The Office of the Scottish Information Commissioner
Kinburn Castle
Doubledykes Road
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9DS
www.itspublicknowledge.info
An application to OSIC must be made in writing within six months of receipt of ACC’s Review
Decision Notice. When applying to OSIC to make a decision you should give your name and
address for correspondence. Please note that OSIC will not be able to investigate if you
have not used your real name to make your information request.
You must also specify:
• Which request for information your requirement for review relates to
• The reason that you asked ACC to carry out a review of your request
• The reason why you are not satisfied with ACC's review outcome decision
The Commissioner will contact ACC and invite its comments on your application. Thereafter
(if no settlement has meantime been reached), the Commissioner must reach a decision
within 4 months of receiving your application, or within such other period as is reasonable.
You will receive written notice of the outcome of the Commissioner’s decision.
Should you wish to appeal against the Scottish Information Commissioner's decision,
there is an appeal to the Court of Session on a point of law only. Any such appeal
must be made within 42 days after the date of the decision has been issued.
Your data: FOI and EIR enquiries
How we handle your data
If you make a Freedom of Information (FOI) or an Environmental Information (EIR) request,
we’ll keep all information about your request in an electronic case file. We don’t use your
personal data for any other purpose than to correspond with you about your request. We
don’t share your data with anyone else. We publish responses to FOI and EIR requests on
our
Disclosure Log, but we remove all your personal information from responses before we
publish them.
How long we’ll keep your information for
Where a request has not been appealed to the Scottish Information Commissioner for a
decision, we keep our FOI and EIR Case Files for the current year, plus three years, from the
date that your enquiry was closed. Where a request has been appealed to the Scottish
Information Commissioner for a decision, we keep the case files for the current year, plus six
years. We also keep a register of all FOI and EIR requests we receive for a longer period of
time, so we can understand what the trends are in the numbers and types of request we get,
but this is kept in anonymised form (your data isn’t kept).
Your rights
You have rights in relation to your data, including the right to ask for a copy of it. See the
Your data page for more information about all the rights you have, as well as the contact
details for the Council’s Data Protection Officer. You also have the right to make a complaint
to t
he Information Commissioner’s Office if you think we haven’t handled your data properly.
Our legal basis
Aberdeen City Council is the Data Controller for your data we hold as part of receiving and
responding to your FOI or EIR request. The Council has a statutory duty under the Freedom
of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 and the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations
2004 to respond to requests for information. This means that we understand our legal basis
for processing your data as Article 6(1)(c) of the General Data Protection Regulation.
Responding to FOI and EIR requests is something we have to do by law, and we can’t do it
without processing your data.
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