UK councils will not be able to charge newspapers for freedom of information requests, the Guardian's Roy Greenslade reported today. The communities and local government minister Eric Pickles said in a statement yesterday that "If town halls want to reduce the amount they spend on responding to freedom of information requests they should consider making the information freely available in the first place."

Pickles noted that 90 councils had already published details of spending of over £500 online, which he sees as beneficial both as a recognition of the public's right to know, and because "openness and transparency is absolutely critical to root out waste and inefficiency."

The statement from Pickles comes after criticism from the executive director of the Society of Editors, Bob Satchwell, who was quoted by Hold the Front Page as describing as 'ludicrous' the proposals by Hampshire County Council to ask for government permission to charge commercial organisations, including newspapers, for answering FOI requests.

Satchwell said that "Hampshire County Council should remember this information doesn't belong to them, it belongs to the public." Councillor Colin Davidovitz defended the move, Hold the Front Page reported, saying that newspapers "use the information they receive from FoIs to benefit a great deal," and stressed that this benefit sometimes came from research that the council had done at its own expense. "Why should taxpayers pay for newspapers to benefit?" he asked.

The obvious counter-argument to this statement would be "why should taxpayers pay for research which they never have a chance to learn about?"

Relations between local councils and newspapers in the UK have appeared tense in recent months, largely due to the existence of council-run freesheet papers that compete with independent local papers and which were described by Pickles in June as "town-hall Pravdas." Hammersmith and Fulham council announced earlier this week that it was to close its paper, H&F News, in response to rules proposed by Pickles' department.

Source: Guardian, Hold the Front Page