Scottish Government

Freedom of Information

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 came into force on 1 January 2005.

It is intended to promote a culture of openness and accountability amongst public sector bodies and provides a general right of access to all types of recorded information held by public authorities, including the Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland.

Publication Scheme

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (the Act) requires the Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland to produce and maintain a publication scheme. The Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland has adopted the Scottish Information Commissioner's Model Publication Scheme 2011 and has produced a Guide to Information to:

• Help you see what information we make available about who we are, what we do and how we do it;
• State what charges may be applied when we provide a publication to you;
• Explain how to find the information we publish easily;
• Provide contact details for enquiries and to get help with accessing the information; and
• Explain how to request information we hold that has been published.

Requests for Information

Any information not made available through our publication scheme can be requested under the Act, subject to certain exemptions. An example of this might be where information is covered by the Data Protection Act 1998 or where information is of a commercially sensitive nature.

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INSPECTORATE OF PROSECUTION IN SCOTLAND

GUIDE TO INFORMATION AVAILABLE THROUGH OUR PUBLICATION SCHEME

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (the Act) requires Scottish public authorities to produce and maintain a publication scheme. Authorities are under a legal obligation to:

• publish the classes of information that they make routinely available
• tell the public how to access the information and what it might cost.

The Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland has adopted the Model Publication Scheme 2011 produced by the Scottish Information Commissioner. He has approved this scheme until 31 May 2015. You can see this scheme on our website at www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Justice/ipis or by contacting us at the address below.

The purpose of this Guide to Information is to:

• allow the public to see what information is available (and what is not available) in relation to each class,
• state what charges may be applied
• explain how to find the information easily
• provide contact details for enquiries and to get help with accessing the information
• explain how to request information we hold that has not been published

Availability and formats

The information we publish through the model scheme is, wherever possible, available on our website. We offer alternative arrangements for people who do not want to, or cannot, access the information online or by inspection at our premises. For example, we can usually arrange to send information to you in paper copy (although there may be a charge for this).

Exempt information

We will publish the information we hold that falls within the classes of information below. If a document contains information that is exempt under Scotland's freedom of information laws (for example sensitive personal information or a trade secret), we will remove or redact the information before publication and explain why.

Copyright

Where The Inspectorate of Prosecution holds the copyright in its published information, the information may be copied or reproduced without formal permission, provided that:

• it is copied or reproduced accurately
• it is not used in a misleading context, and
• the source of the material is identified

Where The Inspectorate of Prosecution does not hold the copyright in information we publish, we will make this clear.

Charges

This section explains when we may make a charge for our publications and how any charge will be calculated.

There is no charge to view information on our website or at our premises.

We may charge for providing information to you eg photocopying and postage, but we will charge you no more than it actually costs us to do so. We will always tell you what the cost is before providing the information to you.

Our photocopying charge per sheet of paper is shown in the tables below:

Black and white photocopying

Colour photocopying

Postage costs will be recharged at the rate we paid to send the information to you.

When providing copies of pre-printed publications, we will charge no more than the cost per copy of the total print run.

We do not pass on any other costs to you in relation to our published information.

Contact us

You can contact us for assistance with any aspect of this publication scheme:

The Inspectorate of Prosecution in Scotland

Legal House 2nd Floor

101 Gorbals Street

Glasgow G5 9DW

or

E-mail to

IPS@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

or by telephone to

0844 561 2433

We will also advise you how to ask for information that we do not publish or how to complain if you are dissatisfied with any aspect of this publication scheme.

The classes of information that we publish

We publish information that we hold within the following classes. Once information is published under a class we will continue to make it available for the current and previous two financial years.

Where information has been updated or superseded, only the current version will be available. If you would like to see previous versions, you may make a request to us for that information.

Note: the authority is required to publish the information it holds which falls within the following classes. If the authority does not hold information within a class, please indicate this below the class description.

Where links are provided to web pages, please ensure the link is to a specific document, relevant page or section of the website.