Information not held: what the reply means

What the law requires the body to say

Under the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000, anyone who asks is entitled to be told in writing whether the authority holds information of the kind described ¹. The Act calls this the duty to confirm or deny ¹. A not held reply discharges that duty with a no.

The relevant date is the day the request arrives. The Act covers information held at the time the request is received, but routine amendments or deletions made before the reply that would have happened anyway can be taken into account ¹.

How a not held claim is tested in the UK

The ICO says whether information is held is a question of fact ². It decides disputes on the civil standard, more likely than not, and does not require certainty ².

The ICO expects searches of the places where the information would reasonably be found, not every filing cabinet or computer ². It says recording the areas, staff, keywords and date ranges searched is good practice ². It advises authorities to explain why information is not held where possible, as this can make a complaint less likely ².

• Information held by a contractor on the authority's behalf counts as held ².
• Information the authority can only read in an outside database is not held. Saving or printing it changes that ².
• Information in a recycle bin or on backups may still be held until overwritten ².
• Work that needs significant skill or judgement may mean the information is not held ².

Comparable rules elsewhere

How common these replies are

In the United States, federal agencies processed 1,635,055 requests in fiscal year 2025. Of those, 29.73% closed with no records and 1.21% closed as not reasonably described ⁵. A further 1.48% closed as not an agency record ⁵.

In the United Kingdom, the 39 central government bodies monitored by the Cabinet Office received 94,526 requests in 2025. Information was not held for 19,194 of them ⁶.