King's Printer for Scotland: annual report 2024 to 2025

Activities and developments

Activities and developments: 1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025

3.1 19 ASPs received Royal Assent between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 (see Annex A).  

3.2 11 Explanatory Notes to ASPs were published in this period (see Annex B). 

3.3 378 Scottish Statutory Instruments were registered and published (see Annex C), plus an additional 70 draft Scottish Instruments. 

3.4  In 2024-25, the legislation.gov.uk editorial team continued to capture new amendment information and publish updated versions of legislation. The overarching goal is to ensure the primary legislation on legislation.gov.uk is up to date. Starting in 2020, the team expanded the scope of legislation to be updated, by including selected secondary legislation (SSIs made since 2018, assimilated secondary EU legislation and high priority older SSIs), and introduced a new measure for tracking progress. Since 2020-21, legislation.gov.uk has tracked the proportion of page views of revised legislation shown as being up to date (i.e. with a green amendment status). This measure recognises that the ‘update status’ of a piece of legislation will change over time, as new amendments are made. It helps the team to focus on the most accessed Scottish legislation. At the end of 2024-25, 97.57% of revised legislation page-views were up to date. The target is to maintain this level at least 95% on an ongoing basis.  

3.5 A total of 3,259 amendments made by Acts of the Scottish Parliament and SSIs published between 1st April 2024 and 31st March 2025 were recorded and published on legislation.gov.uk by the editorial team. This is from a total of 28,887 amendments recorded for all jurisdictions (i.e. 11% of the changes were made by Scottish legislation). Annex D provides a breakdown of the total number of amendments recorded and applied by the editorial team in 2024-2025 as compared to 2023-2024.  

3.6  It has been important to ensure Scottish, UK and assimilated EU legislation were kept up to date with the changes to the law following the UK’s departure from the EU. The Legislation Services editorial team identified and published over 157,000 amendments from EU Exit SIs and SSIs. These amendments have now largely been incorporated into the texts of legislation on legislation.gov.uk. Specifically, the domestic impact on Scottish legislation included 277 Primary and Secondary legislation items that were affected by EU Exit legislation. This comprised of 5,722 amendments which have now all been applied to the legislation on legislation.gov.uk. Following EU Exit a further 2,975 amendments have been made to Scottish legislation, 87% of which had been applied on legislation.gov.uk by the end of this reporting period.   

3.7  Lists of new Scottish legislation are made available every day online

3.8 There were six FOI requests handled by KPS in 2024-25.  

3.9 Staff working for the KPS provided copyright management advice in the following areas: 

• KPS staff worked with Scottish Government bodies including Transport Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland, Registers of Scotland and the National Records of Scotland to secure the renewal of their Delegations of Authority.   The Keeper of Public Records at The National Archives authorises Delegations where organisations have a requirement to licence the Crown copyright material they produce or hold outside Open Government Licence terms (April to July 2024) 

• The Scottish Government’s Offshore Wind Directorate were given advice on how a test version of a modelling tool could be made available to developers for re-use under the terms of the Open Government Licence (July 2024) 

• Office of the Advocate General for Scotland were advised on updating the Crown copyright and licensing statement on their website’s publication scheme (December 2024) 

• NatureScot sought advice on the Re-use of Public Sector Information Regulations 2015 and use of Collective Management Organisations (March 2025) 

Financing the King’s Printer for Scotland  

3.10 Under the Scotland Act 1998, the King’s Printer of Acts of Parliament is appointed KPS. The KPS is also the Keeper and CEO of The National Archives, and by agreement with the Scottish Government, the Keeper provides the necessary resources to support the work of the KPS. In consideration of this, the Scottish Government has agreed to pay The National Archives an annual management charge covering the period 1 April to 31 March (inclusive) each year. 

3.11  This section covers the management charges for 2024-25. The management charge for this period is £106,243. These figures are based on the actual level of work undertaken in relation to the operation and maintenance of the legislation.gov.uk platform, and the compiling of legislative amendment data in relation to Scottish legislation in that year. 

3.12 An analysis of the management charges (exc. VAT) between staff costs and non-pay costs is shown below with the previous years’ costs included for comparison: