Calculate the response date for FOIA, EIR, Scottish FOI or Scottish environmental-information requests, with working days, fees, clarification and extensions explained.
How the calculation works
Twenty working days is not twenty calendar days.
Ordinary FOIA requests
Most public authorities responding under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 must respond promptly and no later than 20 working days after receipt. The first working day after the request is received is day 1.
Which bank holidays count?
For ordinary FOIA and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, the statutory definition excludes bank holidays in any part of the United Kingdom. The tool therefore combines the England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland calendars from the official GOV.UK bank-holiday feed rather than simply asking where you live.
Clarification and fees
Where the authority reasonably needs further information to identify and locate what you have requested, the operative timing can change. A valid advance-fee notice can also stop the clock until payment is received. The tool shows these separately so a consumer can see exactly why days have or have not been counted.
Environmental information
Under the EIR, a particularly voluminous and complex request can be extended from 20 to 40 working days where the regulatory conditions are met. Environmental requests should be considered under the environmental-information regime even if the requester has called the request “FOI”.
Public-interest extensions
Under FOIA, extra time to consider the public interest in a qualified exemption is a reasonable-time extension rather than an automatic fixed 40-working-day deadline. ICO guidance says the total should normally be no more than 40 working days unless exceptional circumstances justify longer. The tool labels 40 days as a review point rather than pretending it is always the statutory deadline.
Schools
Maintained schools have a special FOIA timing rule: normally 20 school days or 60 working days, whichever is sooner. Because GOV.UK bank-holiday data does not contain each school’s term and inset-day calendar, the tool gives the 60-working-day outer point and tells you to compare it with the school’s actual 20th school day.
See the ICO FOI timescale guidance and the official GOV.UK bank-holiday service.
Your output
Keep the working record.
Where the tool supports it, export your work to CSV, JSON, plain text or Print/PDF. Keep the source documents separately: an exported summary helps organise a case, but does not replace the original evidence.
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