Freedom of information processes and dissolution - guidance for Commons and PDS staff

When Parliament is dissolved, the House of Commons no longer exists for the purpose of these laws. In turn, our obligations under them do not apply.

This guidance is aimed at staff of the House of Commons Administration and the Parliamentary Digital Service (PDS) and explains how that affects our processes in practice.

Delay public disclosure of new information

Some teams handle written requests for recorded information routinely as part of their business-as-usual processes.

However, in order to prevent these processes from being used to circumvent the change described above, please delay the public disclosure of new information until after the dissolution period is over.

This does not apply to already-publicly available information, to which you can refer enquirers.

This also does not apply either to enquiries relating to commercial transactions, such as queries to the Catering Services or Visitor Services teams about their products or services.

Suspend proactive publication

The obligation to publish information under section 19 of the Freedom of Information Act does not apply during the dissolution period.

Therefore, please delay any proactive publication due to take place during the dissolution period until after it is over, i.e. the first day the House of Commons sits after the general election.

For regular proactive publications covering continuous periods, the updates you make once the dissolution period is over should still account for information relating to the dissolution period. In other words, there should not be a permanent gap in published information relating to the dissolution period.

Continue to respond to request allocations

Since the House of Commons does not exist during the dissolution period, the sending of responses to requests during this period will be suspended.

However, we will still allocate requests to teams in the normal way, providing the same seven-day internal deadline. Please continue to respond to these within the given deadline.

If this will create any issues in your team, due to skeleton teams or individuals being reassigned during the dissolution period, please inform the House of Commons Information Compliance Service as soon as possible.

Completed responses will be sent as soon as possible after the House of Commons has started sitting again, with the dissolution period not counting towards the 20-working day response deadline. Requesters will be notified of this fact.

Further advice

Further information about how to comply with freedom of information law is available on the parliamentary intranet under the ‘Freedom of Information’ section. You can also contact the House of Commons Information Compliance Service by email or phone (x2559).

Further information about publication under the Freedom of Information Act is also available on the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) website.

Last reviewed May 2024