There will be no charge for most requests for environmental information. This is because we have decided to charge for these requests on the same basis as for FOI
requests. This means that we will not charge you if it would cost us less than £100 to provide information to you.
There may be a charge if you request a lot of information or if the information would take us a long time to produce. If it would cost us more than £100 to provide information to you, we will let you know up front how much it will cost in a fees notice. The first £100 of information is always free. We charge 10% of the cost over £100, up to a limit of £600. After that, we charge the full cost of providing information to you.
We work out the charge as follows:
- Staff time is charged at the actual hourly salary rate to a maximum of £15 per hour. We can charge for locating, retrieving and providing information to you. We cannot charge for deciding whether or not to give out the information.
- Photocopying is charged at 10 pence per A4 sheet for black and white, 30 pence for colour.
- Postage is charged at actual rate for first class mail.
You have three months from the date you receive the fees notice to decide whether to pay the charge. The information will be provided to you on payment of the charge. If you decide not to go ahead with the request, there will be no charge to you.
The Scottish Information Commissioner has published a briefing note on charges which will provide you with more information.