Knowes Housing Association Guide to Information
Updated and Reviewed - November 2024
Background
The Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA) requires that all housing associations/co-operatives in Scotland must produce and maintain a publication scheme. This must detail all of the key information that we publish and how you can access it. This Guide to Information is our publication scheme, and contains links to where you can find all of the information listed online.
Knowes Housing Association has adopted the Scottish Information Commissioner’s (SIC) Model Publication Scheme (MPS), and this Guide has been approved by the SIC.
Formats other than online
All of the information listed is available on our website (unless stated), and completely free to access online. However, we understand that not everyone will have online access and where this is the case you can contact us to view this in our office (where this would be convenient).
If you would like a printed copy of any of the information listed, unfortunately we may have to charge a small fee to provide this. This fee will never exceed the cost of photocopying and postage – and we will let you know any total cost before we forward this to you.
Charges, Fees notice
This section explains when we may make a charge for our publications listed in the Guide to Information and how any charge will be calculated.
There is no charge to view information on our website or at our premises except where the staff time involved in sourcing the information exceeds £100.
Staff costs will be calculated at a maximum of £15 per hour. Fees will be charged at 10% of the cost between £100 and £600 with a maximum fee of £50. If the cost of collating the information requested exceeds £600 the staff time required will be deemed excessive and the information will not be provided. The applicant will be contacted and this will be explained.
We may also charge for providing information to you e.g., photocopying and postage, but we will charge you no more than it actually costs us to do so. We will always tell you what the cost is before providing the information to you.
Our photocopying charge per sheet of paper is shown in the table below:
.
Size of paper Pence per single sided copy (black and white) Pence per single sided copy (colour)
A4 10p 30p
We will recharge any postage costs at the rate we paid to send the information to you.
When providing copies of pre-printed publications, we will charge no more than the cost per copy of the total print run.
We do not pass on any other costs to you in relation to our published information.
If you would like to request information that we publish in a format other than online, or arrange a visit to our office to view information, please contact:
info@knowes.org
Information that we cannot publish
Whilst we will try to make all of the information we have detailed available, in rare cases there may be some information that we cannot make available. For example, sometimes if we were to publish certain committee minutes, it could reveal personal details about an individual. This would be a breach of Data Protection legislation if we were to do so. When this is the case, we will remove any personal details before publication and highlight where and why we have done so.
For how long will information be published?
We aim, where possible, to publish information for at least the current and previous two financial years. When we review any document – e.g. our policies – to avoid confusion we will only publish the current version once it has been updated.
Copyright and re-use
Where we hold the copyright on our published information, the information may be copied or reproduced without formal permission, provided that:
• It is copied accurately
• It is not used in a misleading context
• The source of the material is identified
Contact us
If you have any queries about anything contained within this Guide to Information, or if there is some information that you cannot find that you would like to access, please contact:
Corporate Services Department
10 Field Road
Faifley
Clydebank
G81 5BX
Email: info@knowes.org
Tel: 01389 877752 (option 5)
The Information that we make available to you
Under the MPS, the information we provide must be listed under certain “classes” of information. These are the categories of information that are detailed below. As FOI applies to other bodies and sectors across Scotland – such as Scottish Government and Councils for example –this means that not all of the categories in the MPS apply to housing associations/co-operatives.
The details of all the information we hold under each of the classes that apply to our organisation, and hyperlinks to access this information when available online, are outlined below.of the classes that apply to our organisation, and hyperlinks to access this information when available online, are outlined below.
