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Information Laws

What is Information Law?

Information law is a broad area of law that covers how organisations use information in their businesses. Information can take a variety of forms including commercial information that relates to a business and how it operates or personal information about people. Information law spans across a number of different pieces of legislation and the University has a dedicated team in place to ensure we comply with our legal obligations in this area. 

A brief summary of the core information laws is provided below. You can find more information by clicking on the appropriate links.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 promotes openness and accountability across the public sector by providing members of the public with a right of access to recorded information held by public sector organisations (public authorities). The Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) 2004 also provide public access to environmental information held by public authorities. 

The University is classed as a public authority for the purposes of FOIA and EIR. We have obligations to publish information about our activities and to respond to requests for information. The make a request, see our Freedom of Information page

Data Protection Act (DPA)

When we collect, use or store personal data about you, we have to comply with UK data protection laws which are currently the Data Protection Act 2018 and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). These laws set rules around how organisations can use your data by putting in place data protection principles that they must follow. The UK-GDPR also provides everyone with a range of rights to ensure that they have greater control around how their data is managed.