Section 11Means by which communication to be made.

(1) Where, on making his request for information, the applicant expresses a preference for communication by any one or more of the following means, namely—

• (a)
  the provision to the applicant of a copy of the information in permanent form or in another form acceptable to the applicant,
• (b)
  the provision to the applicant of a reasonable opportunity to inspect a record containing the information, and
• (c)
  the provision to the applicant of a digest or summary of the information in permanent form or in another form acceptable to the applicant,

the public authority shall so far as reasonably practicable give effect to that preference.

(1A) [^F1 Where—

• (a)
  an applicant makes a request for information to a public authority in respect of information that is, or forms part of, a dataset held by the public authority, and
• (b)
  on making the request for information, the applicant expresses a preference for communication by means of the provision to the applicant of a copy of the information in electronic form,

the public authority must, so far as reasonably practicable, provide the information to the applicant in an electronic form which is capable of re-use.]

(2) In determining for the purposes of this section whether it is reasonably practicable to communicate information by particular means, the public authority may have regard to all the circumstances, including the cost of doing so.

(3) Where the public authority determines that it is not reasonably practicable to comply with any preference expressed by the applicant in making his request, the authority shall notify the applicant of the reasons for its determination.

(4) Subject to [^F2subsections (1) and (1A)], a public authority may comply with a request by communicating information by any means which are reasonable in the circumstances.

(5) [^F3 In this Act “dataset” means information comprising a collection of information held in electronic form where all or most of the information in the collection—

• (a)
  has been obtained or recorded for the purpose of providing a public authority with information in connection with the provision of a service by the authority or the carrying out of any other function of the authority,
• (b)
  is factual information which—

  • (i)
    is not the product of analysis or interpretation other than calculation, and
  • (ii)
    is not an official statistic (within the meaning given by section 6(1) of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007), and
• (c)
  remains presented in a way that (except for the purpose of forming part of the collection) has not been organised, adapted or otherwise materially altered since it was obtained or recorded.]