Crown copyright

All material produced by civil servants, ministers and government departments and agencies in the course of their work belongs to the Crown and is Crown copyright.  

Much Crown copyright material is made available to use free of charge under the Open Government Licence (OGL) and no other licence is required.  This includes legislation, government codes of practice, government reports, official press releases, government forms and many public records.

Where Crown copyright material is covered by the Open Government Licence, you can:

• Copy, publish, distribute and transmit the information
• Adapt the information
• Exploit the information commercially and non commercially, i.e. by combining it with information of your own

Read more information on the Open Government Licence and its terms.

If the material you want to copy is not available under the Open Government Licence then you may be able to copy it under your CLA Licence.  Just use our Check Permissions tool to search by title or ISBN. 

If the images or text are not available under the OGL or CLA Licence then you must seek permission direct from the copyright holder.