A personal application is a request for documents containing information or opinion which refers to yourself only. This can include job applications, correspondence between yourself and us or correspondence about you. Should a document within the scope of a personal application contain both personal and non-personal information, the non-personal information is likely to be removed from the document prior to release.
A non-personal application is a request for any document or record containing information about a third party, commercial information, or any other information which is not purely about yourself as the applicant. Examples include complaints against a property, building plans and applications, and documents relating to dog attacks.
Please note requests for documents relating to your property, business or pet are classified as non-personal applications as the Freedom of Information Act 1992 defines personal information as:
information or an opinion, whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual, whether living or dead -
(a) whose identity is apparent or can reasonably be ascertained from the information or opinion; or
(b) who can be identified by reference to an identification number or other identifying particular such as a fingerprint, retina print or body sample.