What's the pre-election period (it starts at 00:01 tonight and runs till polling day).
During this period, ministers, civil servants & local gov't should avoid acting in a way that could be perceived as spending public money to influence the election.
However, one thing they definitely can do is answer #FOI requests:
"Requests for factual information or freedom of information requests should be dealt with in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)."
As anyone who puts in #FOI requests knows, just because a public body is supposed to be doing something, doesn’t mean it will.
The ICO has had to issue a Decision Notice for using the pre-election period as a reason to refuse a request (useful if you run into something similar)
The #FOI asked for information about unpaid non-domestic rates.
York Council said it couldn’t release it as “it could affect public support for a particular party”, & it was prohibited from releasing the information by the pre-election period.
ICO said prohibition on publication relates to material that is published by, or on behalf of, a local authority.
Information released under #FOI is published on a statutory basis so can't be "interpreted to be the same as the publication of material by the council itself".
The council had also argued the requester was an active member of a political party and the information related to an ongoing campaign around non-domestic rates.
The Commissioner said that wasn't relevant.
So, #FOI requests can carry on as normal as we head towards the election
#FOI shows in the last four academic years, police in the North West of England received 602 reports of primary or secondary pupils carrying or using blades in schools to threaten or attack
One incident, in Lancashire, involved a four-year-old boy