Access to information

Making an information request

If the information you are looking for isn’t covered by the information we publish, you can make a request to us to release it.

Environmental Standards Scotland (ESS) operates under two pieces of legislation that give you the right of access to information we hold:

- Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 – FOI
- Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 – EIR

We want to be as open as the legislation allows. However, sometimes we will withhold some types of information. This can include, but is not limited to:

- personal information
- information that is about to be published
- information that is commercially confidential
- information that relates to national security

If disclosure is not possible due to the application of an exemption, we still seek to release information in cases where the public interest overrides the exemption applied.

We will always explain our reasons if we withhold information.

Freedom of information or environmental information request (FOI or EIR)

For non-personal information, please email your request to FOI@environmentalstandards.scot, including your name and as much detail as possible about the information you are seeking.

For guidance on how to make a request, please see the Scottish Information Commissioner’s website:

Freedom of Information At A Glance / How Do I Ask? / Tips For Requesters

Once we receive your request, we will acknowledge it and respond within 20 working days. We will not normally charge for responding, but if we consider your request likely to cost more than £600 we may refuse your request and advise on how your request can be modified to come under this threshold. We may also charge if you request hard copies of the information.

Subject access request

You have a right to see information about yourself by submitting a Subject Access Request under the Data Protection Act 2018.

To make a subject access request for access to personal data (i.e. if you believe we hold information on you or someone you are acting on behalf of, and you would like access to it), please download and complete a Subject Access Request and email it to dataprotection@environmentalstandards.scot.

The information we publish

We have adopted the Scottish Information Commissioner’s Model Publication Scheme and we publish information in the following classes:

Class 1: About the authority – Information about the authority, who we are, where to find us, how to contact us, how we are managed and our external relations.

Please see the About Us and Contact Us pages.

Class 2: How we deliver our functions and services – Information about our work, our strategies and policies for delivering our functions and services and information for our service users.

You can find our Strategic Plan on our website.

Class 3: How we take decisions and what we have decided – Information about the decisions we take, how we make decisions and how we involve others.

Minutes of our Board meetings are published regularly on our website. Our Board operates under agreed Standing Orders and we have a Framework Agreement with the Scottish Government, both of which can be found on our corporate and governance reports page.

We will also publish outcome reports from investigations we undertake.

Class 4: What we spend and how we spend it – Information about our strategy for, and management of, financial resources.

Year-end financial information will be published via our annual accounts and annual report.

Class 5: How we manage our human, physical and information resources.

- our staffing structure and staff handbook are available on request
- we do not currently hold any physical resources
- our Privacy Policy is available here: Environmental Standards Scotland Privacy Notice. Our Records Management Plan is available on request

Class 6: How we procure goods and services from external providers.

An ESS procurement policy is in development.

Class 7: How we are performing – Information about how we perform as an organisation and how well we deliver our functions and services.

Our Strategic Plan commits us to developing a set of performance indicators and reporting against these annually. This development will take place as part of the production of our Annual Report and performance scorecard will be published annually on our website.

Class 8: Our commercial publications – Information packaged and made available for sale on a commercial basis and sold at market value through a retail outlet e.g., bookshop, museum or research journal.

We do not currently sell any information on a commercial basis.

Class 9: Our open data – The open data we make available as described by the Scottish Government’s Open Data Strategy and Resource Pack, available under an open licence.

We do not currently hold any data that we make available in this way.