| Legislation falls into two categories
– primary and secondary legislation. Primary legislation comprises
Acts of Parliament. Acts often make provision for related, but more
detailed, regulations to be issued by means of statutory instruments.
These statutory instruments are known as secondary legislation. In
Scotland, the same relationship exists between Acts of the Scottish
Parliament and Scottish Statutory Instruments. This page deals with
secondary information legislation. We also have a page with primary
information legislation.
The full text of all the statutory instruments and Scottish statutory
instruments mentioned below can be found on the Office of Public
Sector Information website.
Environmental information regulationsThe Environmental Information Regulations originally came into
force in 1992 (Statutory Instrument No 3240 of 1992) and were amended
in 1998 (Statutory Instrument No 1447 of 1998) after the UK signed
the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Convention on
Access to Information, Public Participation and Access to Justice
in environmental matters at Aarhus in Denmark - the 1998 Aarhus
Convention.
The new Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (Scottish
Statutory Instrument No 520 of 2004) enable Scottish public authorities
to comply with the Convention and with the new Aarhus-based EU Directive
2003/4/ EC of 28th January 2003 on public access to environmental
information. The equivalent regulations for UK public authorities
are The Environmental Information Regulations 2004 (Statutory Instrument
No 3391 of 2004). The 1992 and 1998 Environmental Information Regulations
were repealed by the 2004 regulations.
The Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 are designed
to tie in as closely as possible with the provisions of the Freedom
of Information (Scotland) Act 2002.
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