Information Charter

Types of Information

Registers of Scotland (RoS) holds both personal and non-personal information in a variety of databases and information stores. Holding this information enables us to fulfil our statutory duties, serve our customers and meet our obligations as an employer.

When we ask you for personal information, you can be assured that we will hold and use the data you supply in terms of all our legal obligations, including the Data Protection Act 1998. We are committed to handling all information safely and securely in line with Government best practice.

Public Registers

The Keeper of the Registers of Scotland is legally responsible for compiling and maintaining public registers relating to property and other legal documents. Our purpose is to safeguard rights through providing public access to important legal information.

In order to create these public registers, we need to handle some personal information (for example, names and addresses of owners of property). When we handle personal information in the course of complying with these statutory duties your rights under the Data Protection Act are limited. This is because the Data Protection Act permits personal information to be used in this way without your consent.

Access to the information in these registers is open to the public. Please contact our Customer Services Centres or visit our website www.ros.gov.uk if you would like to find out more about the public registers.

Personal Information held for other purposes

When we handle personal information for any purpose outwith the statutory requirements to compile and maintain public registers (for example, if you are a customer or supplier),we promise:

  • to make sure you know why we need it;
  • to ask only for what we need;
  • to protect it and make sure nobody has access to it who shouldn’t;
  • to let you know if we share it with other organisations to give you better public services - and if you can say no;
  • to make sure we don’t keep it longer than necessary; and
  • not to make your personal information available for commercial use without your permission.

In return, we ask you:

  • to give us accurate information; and
  • to tell us as soon as possible if there are any changes, such as a new address.

This helps us to keep your information reliable and up to date.

Please contact: Customer Services for more details on the following:

  • how to find out what information we hold about you and how to ask us to correct any mistakes;
  • agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information;
  • circumstances where we can pass on your personal information without telling you, for example to prevent and detect crime or to produce anonymised statistics;
  • our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete your personal information;
  • how we check the information we hold is accurate and up to date; and
  • how to make a complaint.

Please also see our separate Privacy Statement for details about personal information collected from our website.

For independent advice about data protection, privacy and data-sharing issues, you can contact the Information Commissioner at:

Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF
Phone: 08456 30 60 60 or 01625 54 57 45 Fax: 01625 524510
www.ico.gov.uk