FOI Act 2000 and FOISA 2002 · 20 working day statutory deadline
Most FOI requests aren't new. Your process should know that.
ClearFOI checks every request against what's already been published. A match gets an instant, sourced response. Anything new gets triaged, drafted, and tracked against the statutory clock, ready for an officer to approve.
Officers approve every response before it's sent. ClearFOI drafts. It never decides.
467,000
FOI requests a year to UK councils alone (2019 estimate), almost double the 2010 figure
94,526
FOI requests to UK government departments and agencies in 2025, more than double the 2020 figure
34%
of FOI appeals in Scotland found to be machine-generated over one three-month period in 2025-26
The problem
Nobody budgeted for this volume and repetition happening now and on the approaching horizon
Most public bodies have one to three people covering information governance. A meaningful share of what lands in that inbox is a question already answered, sometimes more than once, or information already published. Requests are also getting longer and more complex. In May 2026 the Information Commissioner's Office issued guidance after public authorities reported a rapid rise in the volume and complexity of AI-generated requests. A request written with AI is still a valid request, and it still has to be answered.
Under 10 minutes
From a new request to a reviewed draft, ready for an officer to send, in our testing. More complex requests take longer, and every response is still approved by an officer.
FOI day tracker
Day 6 of 20 working days
Day 6 of 20, request received and classified automatically
Officer review window open.
Sources: mySociety, Freedom of Information in Local Government (2019 estimate); Cabinet Office, Freedom of Information statistics: annual 2025 (gov.uk); Scottish Information Commissioner, Annual Report 2025-26; Information Commissioner's Office guidance on AI-generated requests, May 2026. The time figure comes from Bield's own testing and will vary with the complexity of each request.
How it works
Two paths from the same starting point
Request arrives
Logged automatically the moment it's submitted, no manual entry.
ClearFOI checks it against what's already public
Matched against previous disclosures and published responses in seconds.
Already answered
Instant response drafted
A sourced reply pointing to the existing published answer, ready for an officer to send.
Genuinely new
Full triage runs
Legislation checked, AI-generation likelihood noted as context only, and a draft response prepared under the relevant FOI law.
Officer decides
Approve, edit, or escalate. Nothing is sent without a human confirming it first. The statutory clock is tracked from the moment the request landed, not from when someone gets to it.
FOI day tracker
Day 14 of 20 working days
Day 14 of 20, draft approved and issued by the duty officer
Six working days still in hand before the statutory deadline.
This is what releases officers from typing and gives them back the time for judgement.
Demo
See it on your own published requests
Send us a link to your disclosure log. We'll run a sample of your published FOI responses through ClearFOI and show you how many new requests had already been answered, and where your officers' time goes.
What happens next
- A 20-minute call with the team.
- We show ClearFOI working on real published requests, including a sample of your own.
- You hear back within one working day.
- No cost and no obligation.
Compliance
Built to meet the law, not shortcut it
Human review always
An officer approves every response. ClearFOI prepares work, it does not release information.
Full audit trail
Every classification, draft and edit is recorded with a timestamp and the officer who made it.
Statutory timeline tracking
The 20 working day clock is tracked per request, with warnings before a deadline is at risk.
No black-box decisions
Every suggestion shows the exemption, the reasoning and the source text it was drawn from.
About
A Bield reference project
ClearFOI started in conversations with officers at Scottish local authorities. We expected them to want AI detection. They told us their real problem was compliance: meeting the deadline, answering consistently and not doing the same work twice. So we built around that.
ClearFOI is built by Bield, an independent AI adoption advisory. It shows how Bield works: start with the problem worth solving, prove the build on published data first, and keep people in the loop. If you would like the same approach for your organisation, we build it around your own disclosure log, with every decision staying with your officers.
Contact
Get in touch
Tell us what you're up against and we'll arrange a short call to show you how ClearFOI would handle your FOI queue.