Secondary Information Legislation

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 regulations

The 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 The 1992 and 1998 Environmental Information Regulations were repealed by the 2004 regulations.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.