Empowering young people to learn more about their local environment

Aiden Clarkson, Senior Upstream Regulation Officer at the Information Commissioner’s Office, tells us more. 

Did you know that no matter how old you are, you can ask public authorities about a wide range of topics that affect your day-to-day life and where you live?  

Under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and Environmental Information Regulations (EIR), public authorities must supply the information you ask for unless there is a good reason not to. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) regulates these laws and makes sure that they are fulfilling their duties.  

We’re also here to help people understand their information access rights and how they can use them. We are always looking for ways to reach out to people who may be new to the subject and that’s why we’re proud to be working with the National Education Nature Park to help inspire a new generation. 

Knowledge is power, and helping children and young people understand how they can use these fundamental rights to look after nature and make a difference to their local environment will also support them to be informed and engaged with local issues as an adult.

As the Nature Park programme is about empowering students in the classroom to take action to improve their outdoor spaces for people and wildlife, we’ve created resources that focus specifically on the EIR. They support teachers to run activities that get learners thinking about what environmental information is, what would help improve their understanding of their local area, and who might hold the information they need.  

There are classroom resources for two different age groups. Seven to 11-year-olds (KS2) are encouraged to think about what their local environment is like, who might be in charge of the things that make up the environment and how they can learn more about it. Older learners (11 to 16 years – KS3 - KS4) are asked to consider what might affect their local environment, such as air pollution, tree cutting or housing developments, and how knowing this information could help them understand more about where they live and go to school.  

For both age groups, once they’ve decided what they want to know, students are taken through the process of submitting an EIR request, perhaps to a local council, water company or government department. The aim is they’ll share what they find out in a project or presentation to their peers and the information will support your learners' Nature Park work.  

The resources support teaching key aspects of the citizenship curriculum, for example the role played by public institutions in society and how citizens can actively contribute to improving their community. As well as the classroom resources, there is an educator guidance resource which provides background information and further details on requesting environmental information.  

We want to show that EIR can help people support the causes that they are passionate about. We hope that these practical activities will help to bring EIR to life and give learners an appreciation of the many ways they can exercise their information rights, both now and in the future. We’re looking forward to hearing about the types of information they’ve managed to access and how they’ve put it to practical use to help their local environment, and we really hope that they will go away from the exercise with skills that they can use later in life.