Access to information
Equalities: We are subject to numerous legal duties relating to equalities e.g. race, disability, gender etc. We recognise and welcome those duties, which are embraced in our Equality and Diversity Document Framework.
Under the Freedom of Information Act you can request that we make available to you any information held by the Council, that has not already been published. The legislation does not cover opinions or recollections unless they are already recorded. We are not obliged to create new information in order to respond to requests.
Requests for environmental information are subject to the Environmental Information Regulations.
Before you submit a request
Our disclosure log has a full list of every Freedom of Information request we've answered recently.
We may have already answered your question, check the disclosure log's list of different services that may host the information you're looking for.
- Bereavement, Cemetery
- Building Control
- CCTV
- Climate Change
- Commercial Properties, Business Rates
- Community Safety
- Contracts
- Councillors
- Devolution
- Director
- Domestic Council Tax
- Economic Development, Customer Services Call Centre
- Elections
- Enforcement
- Events and Culture
- Finance, Budget, Expenses
- Food safety, Health and Beauty, Animals
- Green Space, Bin Collections, Parks, Enforcement
- Healthy Living
- Housing Benefit, Council Tax, Fraud
- Housing Development and Policy
- Housing Maintenance
- Housing Management
- Housing Scheme and Finance
- Housing Solutions & Private Sector
- HR
- ICT, software
- Legal
- Licensing
- Member Services
- Noise
- Parking tickets
- Planning
- Planning Policy
- Policy & Corporate Support
- Property Services
- Taxi Licensing
- Transport
How to request information
The Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to ask the Council for all the recorded information it has on any subject, other than environmental information which is dealt with under the Environmental Information Regulations.
The Freedom of Information Act does not give you access to your own personal data (information about yourself), such as your tenancy files. You have a right of access to information held about you, under the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
Use this online form to submit your FOI request
Please refer to our Corporate Privacy Notice for details on how we process your personal information and your rights.
How long do we have to respond to FOI requests:
We normally have 20 working days to respond to a request. If a fees notice is issued, the 20 working day period is suspended until the fees are paid.
If your initial request is unclear or ambiguous we will contact you for further information and advise you that the 20 working period has been suspended and will not recommence until we receive a clearer request.
Routine requests for information may be handled informally. These are simple requests which can be answered very quickly.
Publication Scheme:
As well as responding to requests for information, we are required to publish information proactively. The Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires us to have a Publication Scheme, approved by the Information Commissioner's Office and to publish information covered by the Scheme.
Our Publication Scheme sets out our commitment to make certain classes of information routinely available, such as policies and procedures, minutes of meetings, annual reports and financial information.
Freedom of Information Publication Scheme and Information Asset List/Register
Re-use of Public Sector Information Schedule of Charges
Expenditure in excess of £500.00
Datasets which have been requested will be added to the Publication Scheme as they are made available.
Re-use of Information:
To maximise use and re-use of any information made available under our Publication Scheme and Datasets (that have been requested as part of the Publication Scheme), where relevant, we make the information available under our Open Licence for you to reuse for non commercial purposes, research activities, private study, internal circulation within your organisation or for the purposes of news reporting. However, this is subject to the information contained within the documents being used accurately and not in a misleading context.
You should also identify Dartford Borough Council as the source of the information. Where possible and relevant, we have made this data available in both a 'human-readable' format (such as PDF) and an open, 'machine-readable' format that is not dependent on any specific software (such as CSV or XML).
In the case of map reference points, we have made these available as a visual map and a CSV file.
We reserve the right to charge a nominal fee under our Charged Licence eg: to recover nominal charges and/or impose re-use conditions over and above those contained in the Open Licence.