How this works

You answer a few plain questions, this works out which office has to reply and what the law entitles you to, and you get a finished request to send yourself. There are five steps and you can see all of them.

1. What you tell us

   A short set of plain questions: what records you are after, which agency is likely to hold them, and where a reply should be sent. Nothing is asked that the request itself does not need.

2. What the law says

   Your answers are checked against the rules for this kind of request: which law applies, which office has to answer, and how long it has to do it. Every rule carries the date it was last checked against the official source. Where a rule has been checked, its citation shows that date; where it has not been checked yet, the citation shows the law and no date.

3. What has to go with it

   Some requests need something attached or sworn to, such as a statement that the records are about you. This works out which of those apply and asks you for them, and it refuses to guess when it cannot tell.

4. The document you send

   The finished request is written out with the law cited and addressed to the office your answers point at, and you read it over before it goes anywhere. Change an answer and the letter changes with it.

5. What happens after

   You are told the date the answer is due, how that date was worked out, and what the agency is allowed to do that can push it later. You can save the date to your own calendar.

How it gets sent

A request can go out three ways: through the agency's own web form, as an email you send from your own mail program, or as paper mail you post yourself.

In all three, you are the sender. This site never sends anything to an agency for you, and it has no outbox, no mail server, and no way to post a letter.

Which of the three you are offered depends on what the office you picked has published. An office that only takes requests through its own web form is offered that and nothing else, and this tool will not invent an address for one that has published none.

No office in the list this site launched with has published an email address for requests, so no email option appears today. The email path is built and is waiting for an office that publishes one.

When an email option does appear, the link opens your own mail program with the office's address already filled in and a line marking where your letter goes. You write the subject yourself and paste the letter in from the page you were just on.

Your letter is not put inside that link, and neither is the subject. Mail programs cut an over-long link off without telling anybody, so a letter carried that way arrives as half a request that still looks like a whole one, and a web address is not a safe place to put what you told us.

None of this needs an account, and nothing you typed is kept once your request is ready.