How does the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 treat work emails sent from an official's personal account?

The short answer

Under the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), what matters is the content and purpose of the information, not the email account it happens to sit in. If an official of a public authority conducts the authority’s business using a private email account, that correspondence can still be “held” by the authority for FOIA purposes and may therefore be disclosable.

”Held” is about function, not location

FOIA gives a right of access to recorded information held by a public authority. The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has long taken the position that information about an authority’s official business does not fall outside the Act simply because it was created or stored on a personal email account, a private device, or a personal messaging app. The deciding question is whether the information relates to the public authority’s functions and is held on its behalf.

This means an official cannot place public-business records beyond reach merely by routing them through a personal inbox. Conversely, genuinely private correspondence with no connection to the authority’s business is not caught.

Practical implications

• Locating records: When responding to a request, an authority may need to ask staff to search personal accounts for relevant official correspondence.
• Exemptions still apply: Treating the email as “held” only brings it within scope. The authority can still consider FOIA exemptions (for example, personal data handled under data-protection law, or other qualified or absolute exemptions) before deciding what to release.
• Records management risk: Business conducted in personal accounts is harder to capture, retain, and find. Good practice is to conduct official business on official systems, and to forward or copy any unavoidable personal-account business correspondence into corporate recordkeeping.

Why this matters for IG professionals

The principle mirrors a broader records and information-governance truth across jurisdictions: a record’s status is determined by its content and the function it serves, not by the tool used to create it. Capturing in-scope communications regardless of channel is essential to meeting both access obligations and retention requirements.

For related guidance on managing email and messaging as records, see the email and messaging topic hub.