Your right to know

Overview#

You have a legal right to ask Scottish public authorities for information. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, or why you want to know.

The law#

The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) gives everyone the right to request recorded information held by Scottish public authorities. “Everyone” means everyone. You don’t need to be Scottish, a British citizen, or even resident in the UK. You don’t need to give a reason for asking. You don’t need to explain what you plan to do with the information.

FOISA came into force on 1 January 2005. In 2024-25, over 98,000 information requests were made to Scottish public authorities, and three quarters of these resulted in some or all of the information being released.

Young people have the same rights. If you are 12 or over, you can make a request in your own name. Children under 12 can also make requests, though the authority may ask them to show they understand what they are asking for.

Who you can ask#

FOISA covers hundreds of Scottish public authorities. The main ones include:

• All 32 local councils - covering planning, social work, education, housing, roads, and everything else they do
• NHS boards - territorial boards, special health boards, and NHS National Services Scotland
• The Scottish Government, including all its agencies and directorates
• Police Scotland
• The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
• Universities and colleges
• Non-departmental public bodies such as NatureScot, Scottish Enterprise, and Creative Scotland

The full list is set out in FOISA, and Scottish Ministers can add new bodies over time. Registered social landlords (housing associations) were brought under FOISA in November 2019, covering functions like social housing management and homelessness. Privately run prisons and grant-aided special schools were added in 2016 through a designation order.

Good to know: Companies wholly owned by Scottish public authorities are automatically covered by FOISA, regardless of what they do. Separately, other private bodies can be brought under FOISA if they carry out public functions.

If you’re not sure whether a particular organisation is covered, the Scottish Information Commissioner has a searchable directory of authorities at foi.scot.

What you can ask for#

You can ask for any recorded information the authority holds. That means anything written down, saved electronically, or otherwise recorded. For example:

• Emails and correspondence
• Minutes of meetings
• Reports, briefings, and internal guidance
• Spreadsheets and databases
• Contracts and invoices
• Inspection reports and audits
• Correspondence with other organisations

FOI gives you the right to copies of recorded information, not answers to questions. If you have a question, think about what documents or records might contain the answer, and ask for those instead.

You can ask for information the authority hasn’t published. FOI isn’t limited to things already in the public domain. And you can ask for information in a particular format, such as a spreadsheet rather than a PDF, though the authority only has to comply if it’s reasonable.

Good to know: Every Scottish public authority must maintain a publication scheme and produce a Guide to Information — a document listing what they already publish, where to find it, and whether it’s free or charged for. Before making a request, check the authority’s website for their Guide to Information. What you want may already be available. If it is, the authority can point you to it instead of processing a formal request.

What they must do#

When you make a valid request, the authority must:

• Reply within 20 working days. That’s 20 days excluding weekends and national bank holidays, starting the day after they receive your request.
• Give you the information unless a specific legal exemption applies. If they withhold anything, they must tell you which exemption they’re relying on and why.
• Help you if your request isn’t clear enough. FOISA places a duty on authorities to advise and assist requesters. If your request is too vague or too broad, they should contact you to help narrow it down, not simply refuse.

If you send your request to the wrong authority, say you write to the council when the information is actually held by an NHS board, they should still help. They should tell you who to contact, even if they can’t answer the request themselves.

The 20-working-day deadline is a legal requirement. If an authority is consistently late or unhelpful, you can raise this with the Scottish Information Commissioner.

What FOI does not cover#

FOI has limits. Knowing them upfront saves you time.

Your own personal data. If you want information an authority holds about you, such as your medical records, your social work file, or your employment history, that’s a subject access request under data protection law. It’s a different process with different rules and different timescales. The authority should tell you this if you make an FOI request for your own data by mistake.

UK-wide public authorities. FOISA only covers Scottish public authorities. If you want information from HMRC, the DWP, the Home Office, or the Ministry of Defence, you need the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000. That’s overseen by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), not the Scottish Information Commissioner. Different law, different exemptions, different appeal routes.

Information they’ve never held. An authority can only give you information it holds or has held. If the records were never created or received, there’s nothing to disclose. They must tell you if that’s the case.

Unrecorded opinions. If someone thought something but never wrote it down, FOI can’t reach it. The right covers recorded information only.

The Scottish Parliament itself. The Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body is covered by FOISA, but individual MSPs are not. Political parties, private companies, and most charities are also outside FOISA’s scope.

How Scottish FOI differs from UK FOI#

FOISA and the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000 are separate laws. FOISA covers Scottish public authorities and is enforced by the Scottish Information Commissioner, with appeals going to the Court of Session. The UK Act covers UK government departments and English, Welsh, and Northern Irish public authorities, is enforced by the Information Commissioner’s Office, and has its own tribunal appeal route. The exemptions are different too — they don’t share the same list or numbering.

If you’re requesting information from a Scottish council, NHS board, or the Scottish Government, you’re using FOISA. If you’re requesting information from a UK government department, you’re using the UK Act. The advice on this site covers Scottish legislation — for UK FOI advice, see WhatDoTheyKnow’s guide.

Environmental information#

If the information you want relates to the environment, a separate set of rules may apply: the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004. These can give you stronger rights. You can make a request verbally, more bodies are covered, and the presumption in favour of disclosure is stronger.

See Environmental information for more information.

What next?#

Ready to ask? See How to make a request.