Reuse of information regulations

The Public Sector Information (PSI) Regulations, which came into effect on 1 July 2005, implement a European Directive (2003/98/EC) on the reuse of public sector information. The Directive aims to harmonise rules and practices, enabling growth of the information industry across Europe.

The Directive and Regulations focus on reuse of information rather than access. Our obligations to supply information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004 do not automatically give the right to reuse the information.

The information is usually disclosed with a warning that separate permission must be obtained from the copyright owner before it is used in a way that would infringe copyright for example, by making multiple copies and issuing these to the public. Existing UK legislation on copyright remains unchanged by the Regulations.

Relationship with data protection

The Regulations in no way affect the level of protection of individuals regarding the processing of their personal data under the provisions and principles of the data protection legislation.

Scope of the Regulations

The following documents are excluded from the Regulations:

• documents that are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information legislation;
• documents that are excepted from disclosure under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004;
• documents in which the copyright and/or other intellectual property rights are owned or controlled by a third party;
• documents that fall outside the scope of our public task, that is, documents not directly related to our core responsibilities, such as documents with a value-added or commercial nature;
• documents held by educational and research establishments such as schools, universities, archives, libraries and research facilities;
• documents held by cultural establishments including museums, libraries, archives, orchestras, theatre and performing arts establishments;
• documents held by public service broadcasters (radio and TV stations) for the fulfilment of a public service broadcasting remit.

Definition of "reuse"

"Reuse" means the use by a person (or company) of a document held by us for a purpose other than the initial purpose for which the document was produced. The transfer of documents from one public sector body to another in pursuit of their public tasks does not constitute reuse.

Asset lists

An asset is any information that we produce that is of interest or value to us as an organisation and potentially to others. An asset list is a register of these information assets categorised using a standard classification method. We will be using the Publication Scheme as our asset list.

The first step to re-using public sector information is to know what significant documents are available for re-use. All significant documents registered within our Publication Scheme are available for re-use.

Find out about applying to reuse public sector information.