Openness

The Crofting Commission takes the protection of your privacy seriously.  To safeguard your personal data and make sure that it is accurate, we only collect and/or store the data necessary to carry out our functions as a regulatory body, as outlined in our Privacy Notice.

We aim to provide high quality services and information to all members of the public, but we must ensure we comply with our obligations under FOISA/EIR, even if no reference is made to these Acts when someone requests information from us.  So, while technically every request for information made to us could be classified as a Freedom of Information (FOI)/Environmental Information Request(EIR), the Commission’s approach will now be, in line with the Section 60 Code, of the Scottish Ministers’ Code of Practice on the Discharge of Functions by Scottish Public Authorities, to treat the following type of request as a general enquiry; where a request is:

• Simple and straightforward
• We will have no difficulty in releasing all the information requested within the relevant timescale
• And it is likely that the requester will be satisfied with the response and unlikely to be dissatisfied.

Where the request is complex and will require investigation or where it may not be straightforward to locate the information and collate it in a format for release, requests will be processed under the relevant legislation, either as an FOI request or an EIR.

This will give the requester the right to ask for a Review of the initial response and recourse to appeal to the Scottish Information Commissioner’s Office, if they remain dissatisfied.

We aim to respond to all correspondence within 20 working days of receipt. If we cannot provide a full reply within this period, we will write to you to explain why there is a delay and when you can expect to receive a full response.

Before making a request for information

We already have a large amount of information available on this website, via our Publication Scheme which can be found below and in our Annual Report. You can also find many publications, information on consultations and Board papers.  We recommend that you look through this website first before requesting information as it may already be available.

We are strongly committed to complying with legislation that gives you the right to request information and for that information to be provided to you unless there are good reasons not to do so.  However, you should be aware of our guidance on vexatious and repeated requests which can be found below, along with a copy of our Charging Policy.

We have also provided a suggested template which you can use to request personal data, this can be found below. However, you should also refer to the page on the Data Protection on this website.