Somewhere in the traffic commissioner’s office, DVSA’s systems and National Highways’ files sits recorded information about the roads you run, the enforcement pattern in your area and the decisions that shape your licence. Most operators never think to ask for any of it. The Freedom of Information regime exists precisely so that you can, and it costs nothing but a well-written email.
You have the right to ask to see recorded information held by public authorities. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland that right comes from the Freedom of Information Act; Scotland has its own Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act. If what you want is environmental information - carbon emissions, or information about the environment’s effect on human health - the request is handled under the Environmental Information Regulations instead. The practical point from the official guidance is that you do not need to know or say which law you are asking under: the authority routes it correctly at its end.
For a haulier, the public-authority list is the interesting part. The traffic commissioners, DVSA, DVLA, National Highways, local authorities running clean air zones or parking enforcement - all are public authorities holding recorded information. Fleet-level questions like “how many prohibitions were issued at that check site last year” or “what does the published criteria for our traffic area say” are exactly the kind of thing the regime exists to answer.
One boundary matters before you start. If you want information an organisation holds about you - your own records - that is not an FOI request at all. The official guidance is explicit that there is a different way to ask for information held about you personally, and that route is the subject access request under data protection law. FOI is for information about the world: policies, statistics, decisions, recorded facts. Your own file goes through the other door.
The Information Commissioner’s Office, which oversees the regime, gives the best single piece of advice before any request: search first. Public authorities publish a great deal already. Their publication schemes, annual reports, policies and datasets sit on their websites; their disclosure logs show answers they have already given to other people’s requests; and WhatDoTheyKnow, the public register of requests, holds over a million requests and responses from thousands of authorities. If the answer is already public, a search finds it in minutes where a request takes weeks.
Haulage has its own version of this habit. The traffic commissioners already publish Applications and Decisions - the notices that give statutory objectors their window on licence applications - and the operator licensing guide explains what is published and why. Reading what the regulator already publishes often answers the question, and when it does not, it sharpens the request into something the authority can answer quickly.
The ICO’s guidance on drafting is refreshingly human, and it maps directly onto how busy public bodies work. Keep the request clear and simple; use plain language; numbered lists or bullet points help structure it. Keep it civil - even if you are mid-dispute with the organisation, an information request tangled up with a complaint travels slower and answers worse. Read it twice before sending, or have someone else read it, because a request the authority cannot understand becomes a clarification exchange that adds weeks.
The discipline that works in a transport office: one request, one subject, dated, with the exact recorded information described narrowly enough to find but widely enough to matter. “All correspondence about my company” is a request built to be refused or narrowed; “the published assessment criteria used for operator licence applications in the West Midlands traffic area in 2025” is a request built to be answered.
The ICO points requesters at two resources that reward a transport audience. Disclosure logs on an authority’s own website show how it has answered earlier requests, which tells you both what it holds and how it words refusals. WhatDoTheyKnow goes further: a public register of over a million requests and responses across thousands of authorities, searchable by anyone. Before drafting your own request to DVSA or a local council, search what other people have already asked them. Someone in your sector has usually been there first, and their answer either closes your question or shows you exactly how to phrase it.
The useful requests in this industry tend to cluster. Enforcement pattern questions: how DVSA deploys checks in an area, or published statistics behind a targeting scheme. Policy questions: the criteria or guidance a decision-maker was working from, when a decision affecting your operation looks odd. Environmental questions, routed through the EIR: emissions data or air-quality monitoring behind a clean air zone your trucks pay to enter. Each is recorded information a public authority holds, which is the only test that matters.
Treat the answer the same way you treat an inspection report: file it, and let it change something. The operators who get value from FOI are not fishing; they are running a business that deals with public bodies daily, and they have decided to read the public parts of those bodies’ paperwork as carefully as their own.