The Environmental Information (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 2013

EXPLANATORY NOTE

(This note is not part of the Regulations)

Regulation 19 of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (“2004 Regulations”) provides that a person who, with the intention of preventing disclosure of information subject to a request, alters, defaces, blocks, erases, destroys or conceals the information is guilty of an offence. An offence under regulation 19 is a summary only offence with a fine not exceeding, at current levels, £5,000. As a summary only offence, any prosecution must be brought within six months of the commission of the offence, in accordance with section 136 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995.

These Regulations amend the 2004 Regulations by specifying that in relation to offences committed on or after 31st May 2013 the time period within which a prosecution must be brought is six months from the date on which evidence, sufficient in the opinion of the prosecutor to justify proceedings, comes to the prosecutor’s knowledge. Furthermore, no proceedings can be commenced more than three years after the commission of the offence.