Preparing for FOI Requests: How to Document Decisions Before You Are Asked to Explain Them

A FOI request about a significant public sector decision arrives in one of two situations. In the first, the public body has structured decision records: the decision logged at the time, with rationale, alternatives considered, evidence base, and confidence level captured contemporaneously. The FOI response team retrieves the relevant records, applies appropriate exemptions, and provides a response that accurately represents the decision process. The process takes hours, not weeks.

In the second situation, the public body does not have structured decision records. The FOI response requires a reconstruction exercise: gathering email chains, meeting minutes, and submissions from multiple people across the organisation, attempting to reassemble the decision process from incomplete and inconsistent sources, and producing a response that may not accurately represent what was actually known and decided at the time. This process takes weeks, costs significant management time, and frequently produces responses that are challenged on accuracy.

The difference between these two situations is entirely the result of decisions made (or not made) at the point when the original decision was taken. Building the documentation practice that puts public bodies in the first situation rather than the second is the most practical investment in FOI preparedness available.

What FOI Requests About Decisions Actually Ask For

FOI requests about public sector decisions typically seek one or more of: the decision itself and when it was made, the evidence or analysis that informed it, the alternatives that were considered and why they were rejected, who was involved in the decision and in what capacity, the expected outcome and what review was planned, and any advice received from legal or other specialist advisers.

These are precisely the fields that a structured decision log captures. A public body that maintains structured decision logs can respond to most decision-related FOI requests by retrieving and reviewing the relevant decision records, applying appropriate exemptions, and providing the redacted records. This is a fundamentally different process from the reconstruction exercise that characterises FOI responses in organisations without structured decision documentation.

The Five Decisions That Generate the Most FOI Requests

Not all decisions attract FOI attention equally. The five categories that generate the most FOI requests — and therefore the most benefit from structured documentation — are:

• Public procurement decisions — why a particular supplier was chosen, what alternatives were considered, and whether value for money was demonstrated. Procurement FOI requests are among the most common and often the most contentious.
• Planning and development decisions — why planning permission was granted or refused, what material considerations were taken into account, and whether relevant policies were applied consistently.
• Service change and reduction decisions — why a service was reduced, changed, or closed, what impact assessment was conducted, and what alternatives were considered.
• Personnel and HR decisions — redundancy selection criteria, senior appointment decisions, and disciplinary outcomes (noting that some personal data is exempt from disclosure).
• Emergency and crisis response decisions — particularly decisions made under time pressure where the normal consultation and documentation processes were not followed.

Building the Documentation Practice

The documentation practice that makes FOI preparedness achievable without significant additional burden has three requirements. First, it must happen at the time of the decision, not retrospectively. Second, it must use a structured format that captures the fields FOI requests commonly seek. Third, it must be proportionate — applied to decisions that are likely to attract scrutiny rather than every routine operational choice.

The practical trigger for structured documentation is the FOI exposure test: would a journalist, an opposition politician, or a campaigning NGO be interested in how this decision was made? If the answer is yes, the decision warrants a structured log entry. This test correctly identifies the decisions that generate FOI requests without creating a documentation burden for decisions that will never attract external interest.

For the decisions that pass the test, the documentation requirement is straightforward: the decision, the basis, the alternatives considered, the evidence reviewed, the confidence level, and the outcome review date. Completing this record takes 5–10 minutes at the time of the decision. Reconstructing it in response to a FOI request takes days.