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.

How to request environmental information

You can make a request for environmental information simply by contacting us. Unlike a Freedom of Information request your request does not have to be made in writing.

Timescales

We will acknowledge your request, and respond to your request within 20 working days. if your request is quite general we may contact you for further clarification to assist us in providing the information you have asked us for.

We may in exceptional circumstances extend our response timescales by up to another 20 working days if your request is particularly large or complex. We will always contact you to inform you if we are not able to respond to your request within 20 working days.

Charges

We can charge a reasonable amount towards making environmental information available. Any charge we make for providing environmental information is based only on estimated costs of staff time to locate and retrieve information plus any costs which may be associated with providing the information in a particular format, copying and postage costs. We will not charge for the time taken to decide if we hold the information you have requested or the time it takes to decide whether the information can be released. You can find details of our charging structure below.