Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004
The Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 provide a right to access environmental information which is held by a designated body. Although Housing Associations are not currently subject to the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, Housing Associations have been designated bodies with regard to Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations since 2014.
Environmental Information
The regulations apply a very broad definition to what may be considered to be environmental information. This includes any information that we may hold in written, visual, electronic or any other material form on:
The state of the elements of the environment – Such as air, water, soil, land and landscape.
Substances – Energy, noise, radiation or waste, emissions, discharges and other releases into the environment affecting or likely to affect the state of any of the elements of the environment outlined above.
Administrative measures such as our policies, plans, programmes, environmental agreements and any activities affecting or likely to affect the state of any of the elements outlined above.
Reports – Cost-benefit and other economic analyses used in our policies, plans, programmes, agreements and other activities.
Effects of the environment on conditions of human life – Health and safety, contamination of the food chain, floods, cultural sites and the built environment.
The information which falls under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIR) is likely to be much broader than you think. The kind of information which may fall under the ambit of the EIR can include:
- Planning decisions
- Building maintenance
- Development of new homes
- Information about land
- Emissions, this could be noise or other type of emissions
- Energy efficiency measures
- Waste disposal
Environemtnal information covers a wide range of information, if you make a written request under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 for what we consider to be environmental information, we have to first process your request under FOISA and issue a refusal notice, and then we will respond to your request under the EIR, so don't be alarmed if we initially issue a refusal notice for your request, we are simply following the law.
Unlike making a Freedom of Information request which must be made in a written format, you can make a request under the EIRs verbally in person or over the telephone. You can of course also make your request in writing or via email. You don't have to tell us why you are requesting the information, and making a request isn't restricted to people who live in Scotland or even the United Kingdom, anyone can make a request under the EIRs from anywhere in the world.
In most instances we will provide the environmental information you have requested free of charge. We can however under Regulation 8 of the EIRs make a reasonable charge for information where a request is particularly voluminous and a large amount of our staff time and resources is taken up by dealing with a request. If we charge for information, we will issue a fees notice and the clock will stop in relation to the timescale we have to respond to your request and won't commence until we have received your payment. If we have not received a response to our fees notice after 60 working days then we will refuse your request. We publish our charging schedule on our website so its probably helpful to take a look at this. Its also helpful to focus your request, or narrow down what information you are requesting in order to help us respond to you or to keep any costs involved in reponding to your request to a minimum.
We will try to respond to your request as soon as we can but certainly no later than 20 working days from the day after we receive your request. When we calculate 'working days' this means we don't count Saturdays or Sundays or bank holidays. You should also bear in mind that if we if we ask for clarification from you about your request, or request a payment for the information you have requested we will stop the clock on your request until you have provided us with the clarification we are looking for. If a request is particularly voluminous or complex we can extend the timescale for a further 20 working days, in the event that we extend the timeslcae we will write to inform you.
