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Access to information

The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority is committed to openness, transparency and accountability. We will do our best to provide information to members of the public on request, where it is held by us and provided that there is no legal or other restriction on disclosing it.

If we can, we will respond to requests for information at the time of the request, in the normal course of business.

Much of the information we hold is routinely published and is easily accessible, either from this website or by contacting our offices directly.

Publication Scheme 

The Freedom of Information Act requires all public authorities to produce and maintain a Publication Scheme. This is a general guide to what information is available and where to find it, and includes:

  • the classes of information that we publish or intend to publish, and where you can find it
  • the manner in which the information is published
  • an indication of the charges we may need to make in certain circumstances

Please take a look at the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority Publication Scheme

Please see our Document Retention guidance note for an indication of how long we keep records and information, either in electronic or hard copy format.  

Open data

You can find out what we spend, how we spend it and other financial, personnel and authority information from our open data page.  This includes details of all our spending and procurement, including any current contracts out for tender.

Still can’t find the information you want?

As well as information we routinely publish, members of the public have important rights to access information held by public bodies, including the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, under three main pieces of legislation:

  • The Freedom of Information Act 2000
  • The Environmental Information Regulations 2004
  • The UK General Data Protection Regulation and the Data Protection Act 2018

If you can’t find the information you want from our Publication Scheme or this website, you may submit a request for the information by contacting us directly as shown at the bottom of this page.  We will be happy to provide the information if we can, unless there is any restriction on doing so in which case we will explain to you why we cannot provide it.  Your request may need to be considered under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 or Environmental Information Regulations 2004 and, in some cases, we may need to make a small charge for the provision of the information.   Please see our current Fees Notice. 

We publish a summary of requests for information received by the Authority under the terms of FoI, EIR and GDPR/DPA, and as of 2025 this will now include the time taken to respond and whether/why any information was refused, and will be on a quarterly basis rather than six monthly as previously.  These details are shown below – but if you would like any further details please get in touch on accesstoinfo@yorkshiredales.org.uk