Commentary on Sections Part 4: Miscellaneous Section 36 – Access to historic environment records
231.Section 36 requires a historic environment record to be a publicly available resource, access to which should be available free of charge. The Welsh Ministers must also furnish professional advice and assistance to help users locate and interpret information provided in or accessed by means of a historic environment record.
232.Subsection (3) gives the Welsh Ministers the power to impose charges in order to recover the costs of providing certain services associated with historic environment records, for example, the production of reports based on analysis of historic environment record content. No profit will be made from such charges, which will be limited to the costs of providing the service.