If you receive a request for information that falls within the terms of an absolute exemption, it does not have to be released under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; additional public interest evaluation is not required.
However the duty to provide good quality advice and assistance to the individual making the request remains. You should explain clearly and promptly the reasons why the information cannot be made available.
The absolute exemptions in the FOI Act are listed below and identified in Annex A. They are as follows:
Some absolute exemptions include exemptions designed to place the disclosure of information entirely within the ambit of separate existing access regimes:
for example:
Some of the absolute exemptions are included because the information sought is already reasonably available to the applicant by other means. If this is the case, there is no need to treat the request as an FOI request.
Some absolute exemptions make the FOI rights of access subject to existing legal prohibitions on disclosure:
for example: