All computing equipment purchased through the School of Informatics remains the property of the School of Informatics, regardless of the source of funding or whether it is used on-site or remotely. If you have been issued computing equipment for University or School-related duties, you are required to return it to Computing Support (Room IF-2.07) under any of the following circumstances:

  • Your employment or association with the School of Informatics comes to an end. Please note that any ongoing collaboration, after end of contract, with the School/University does not include using or keeping the School owned computing equipment. Equipment must be returned prior to your leaving date.
  • The equipment has reached the end of its service life, as determined and communicated by Computing Support.
  • The equipment is no longer required for your role, for example due to a change in duties or replacement with updated equipment.
  • The equipment is damaged, faulty, or requires disposal in line with University policies.
  • You transfer to another School within the University; equipment must remain with the School of Informatics.

    • Return Responsibility
    It is the responsibility of the user to ensure that all computing equipment is returned safely. If the equipment is located off-site, it must be returned at the user’s own cost.

    Re-use of equipment
    All equipment that is returned is promptly processed by the computing support team to ensure the operating system and local data has been erased, whether it has reached end-of-life or to be re-allocated to a new user of the device.

    School-funded equipment is re-allocated as per operational needs. Devices that were purchased via other budgets are re-allocated within the relevant research group, programme or Institute.

    Sale of equipment
    The School and University have no mechanism to sell computing equipment to staff or students.

    When computing equipment has reached end of life or is beyond economical repair it must be disposed of by the university under the Data Protection/GDPR, the WEEE initiative and the School has to maintain a record.

    You can find out more about:

    The support form is at: https://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/systems/support/form/

    Last reviewed: 
    16/01/2026