Many sensitive requests would be too costly

But it's been so much of a success, there are now plans by the government to restrict the time spent handling requests for information.

And that means you might have problems when you ask a public organisation for information.

Breakfast, along with many other BBC News programmes, has used the FOI to request information about the knife amnesty and hospital car parking charges.

BBC News uses a specialist team of journalists to request information - last week information from the Metropolitan Police revealed that the summer knife amnesty had little effect on reducing the number of knife crimes.

but the Department for Constitutional Affairs is now putting forward a consultation document outlining the appropriate time costs public organisations can devote to researching requests under the FOI.

In his FOI blog, the BBC's Martin Rosenbaum says: "The new rules would allow public authorities to take into account time spent on considering possible exemptions and consulting others when working out if requests are too expensive,

"But now proposes a cap on the amount of such time they can put towards the cost limit. This would still push many sensitive and tricky requests beyond the cost limit."

Freedom of Information advice

We've put together some information, accessed via the links to the right of this page about the FOI, which includes: