Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009

44 Duties of public bodies relating to climate change

(1) A public body must, in exercising its functions, act—

(a) in the way best calculated to contribute to the delivery of the targets set in or under Part 1 of this Act;

(b) in the way best calculated to help deliver any programme laid before the Scottish Parliament under section 53;

(c) in a way that it considers is most sustainable.

(2) In this Part, a “public body” means a Scottish public authority within the meaning of section 3(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (asp 13).

(3) The Scottish Ministers may, if they consider it appropriate to do so, by order, make further provision relating to the imposition on relevant public bodies of duties relating to climate change.

(4) The duties imposed by subsection (1) and any duty imposed by virtue of an order under subsection (3) are referred to in this Act as “climate change duties”.

(5) In this Part, a public body which has climate change duties under subsection (1) or by virtue of subsection (3) is a “relevant public body”.

(6) An order under subsection (3) may in particular—

(a) impose climate change duties on—

(i) all public bodies;

(ii) public bodies of a particular description;

(iii) individual public bodies;

(b) impose different climate change duties on different public bodies or descriptions of public body;

(c) remove climate change duties.

(7) Before laying a draft of a statutory instrument containing an order under subsection (3) before the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Ministers must consult, in so far as reasonably practicable, the persons mentioned in subsection (8).

(8) Those persons are—

(a) such associations of local authorities; and

(b) such other persons,

as the Scottish Ministers consider appropriate.

(9) The Scottish Ministers must co-operate with a relevant public body to help that body comply with its climate change duties.