In the UK all businesses have the right to request information recoded by a public body, as long as it is non-confidential in nature. This is thanks to the Freedom of Information Act which is in place across British and Scottish law. The Act works in two ways, public bodies are required to publish certain pieces of information, and any member of the public can request information from public authorities.
A public authority must respond promptly and in any event by the twentieth working day after it receives your request, under section 10(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. That deadline is not as firm as it looks. Section 10(1) is expressly subject to section 10(3), which lets an authority take “such time as is reasonable in the circumstances” while it weighs where the public interest lies, and the Act puts no limit on how long that is. Commercial confidentiality is exactly the argument that triggers it. The clock also stops while a fee notice goes unpaid. Working days exclude weekends and bank holidays, so 20 of them is about four calendar weeks at best, and longer over Christmas or Easter. Plan a request that matters to a bid three months ahead, not six weeks.
Some of the most common information people seek out when making a Freedom of Information request are as follows:
- Copies of winning bids from the past
- The number of bidders competing for a tender
- The details of all bidders
- A ranking of these bidders
- Estimated renewal dates on contracts or tenders
- The value of winning tenders
Making a Freedom of Information (FOI) request can be a tactical and wise move when it comes to looking at successful bids or similar tendering contracts to one that you are working on or aspiring to gain in the near future. However, there are times when FOI requests should be avoided.
Firstly you should always look at alternative avenues first before putting in a formal FOI request, the information you need may already be available with a little bit of research and by making a formal request you could be inadvertently telling the authority in question that you did not exhaust these avenues first. This can make you appear lazy or inexperienced which is never good in the world of business.
One of the best places to find this information is through Contract Award Notices (CANs), these are when information is released about contracts that have been awarded in the past. They will contain information about buyer needs, who the awarded contractor was, the dates on the contract (expiry/renewal), and a plethora of other details. CANs are great places to start conducting research and avoids the need for an FOI request as a large part of the information you may need will be readily available here.
For tenders that you are bidding on, all the information you should need will be readily available for you so an FOI request won’t be necessary.
A great time to use an FOI request is when you have already exhausted these avenues. If there is no existing CAN published, which is common for low-value tenders, then it may be time to make an FOI request. If there is no CAN present then you may have to make an FOI request to gain access to the information that you need. A business will be aware of the lack of a CAN so in this circumstance you will not be perceived as lazy or inexperienced in making such a request, they will be aware that there was not a pre-existing avenue for you to utilise for the information you need and that an FOI request is all you could do. Further, if you are purely gathering information and do not have an interest in working with a public authority directly then an FOI request may be more beneficial to you as you can gain insight into the full scope of the information you need.
Sometimes CANs also do not provide a full story of the information that you require. CANs are written at the discretion of the publishing body so can often exclude information that is both non-confidential, and for whatever reason is not included in the CAN. If this is the case and this information is not available elsewhere then it may be the best decision to make an FOI request to gain access to this knowledge.
An authority cannot refuse simply because disclosure would be inconvenient. It has to rely on a specific exemption in Part II of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, The two you will meet most often in procurement work differently. Section 43, commercial interests, is qualified, so the authority must also show the public interest favours withholding. Section 41, information provided in confidence, is one of the absolute exemptions listed in section 2(3), so no public interest balance applies to it, though the information only qualifies if disclosing it would be an actionable breach of confidence. It can also refuse under section 12 where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit, which is £600 for the bodies listed in Part I of Schedule 1, meaning government departments, Parliament, the devolved legislatures and the armed forces, and £450 for every other authority, including councils, NHS bodies, executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies, or under section 14 if the request is vexatious. If you think a refusal is wrong, ask for an internal review and then complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office.
An FOI request gathers evidence; it does not challenge anything. If you think a procurement breached the Procurement Act 2023, which replaced the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 on 24 February 2025, an FOI request is how you gather the information to work out whether you have a case. The claim itself is a separate step, and it is time limited, so take advice early.
Freedom of Information is a useful tool to ensure the playing field in the world of tendering and procurement is fair and that your business can ensure it has access to the information it needs to have the best chance of winning a tender. It is a valuable tool to utilise to access winning bids from the past to mimic their successful tactics, review the feedback they received, and understand more accurately what a body is looking for in their future successful bidders.