Mr P Ashby 27 May 2009

Via e-mail:

[email address]

Dear Mr Ashby,

Release of Information

Further to my correspondence of 28 April 2009, I am writing to inform you that I am now in a position to provide you with a substantive response to your request for information on the grounding of HMS NOTTINGHAM on 7 July 2002. Your enquiry has been considered to be a request for information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).

Please find enclosed the narrative, findings and recommendations of the Board of Inquiry into the grounding of HMS NOTTINGHAM. The names of individuals have been removed as they are not relevant to the request. Also included within this documentation are details of the damage sustained in the incident.

You asked for the cost of repair to HMS NOTTINGHAM. As detailed in the House of Lords Hansard Debate, Volume 641, Written Answer 96-7, the cost of repair was around £26 million.

On the matter of the courts martial relating to the incident, four Naval officers were subject to court martial proceedings and charged with negligence under the Naval Discipline Act 1957. The consequential penalties were two officers were dismissed their ship, one was severely reprimanded and the fourth was reprimanded.

This letter constitutes the notice required to be given under section 17(1) and (7) of the Act.

If you are not satisfied with this response or you wish to complain about any aspect of the handling of your request, then you should contact me in the first instance. If informal resolution is not possible and you are still dissatisfied then you may apply for an independent internal review by contacting the Head of Corporate Information, 6th Floor, MOD Main Building, Whitehall, SW1A 2HB (e-mail [email address]). Please note that any request for an internal review must be made within 40 working days of the date on which the attempt to reach informal resolution has come to an end.

If you remain dissatisfied following an internal review, you may take your complaint to the Information Commissioner under the provisions of Section 50 of the Freedom of Information Act. Please note that the Information Commissioner will not investigate your case until the MOD internal review process has been completed. Further details of the role and powers of the Information Commissioner can be found on the Commissioner's website, http://www.ico.gov.uk.

Yours sincerely

Anita McDonald

The Constitution Unit, a research body at University College London, is carrying out an independent evaluative study of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in co-operation with a number of public authorities, including the Ministry of Defence. An important part of the evaluation process is gathering the experiences and opinions of FOI requesters like you. Any information you provide will only be seen by the Constitution Unit and will be handled in accordance with its privacy policy explained in the survey. The Ministry of Defence will only see the published results: no individual responses will be visible to us and your participation will have no effect on your future dealings with the Ministry.

If you would like to take part in this study, please visit the following link to be taken directly to the survey: http://tinyurl.com/6prff8. Or, if you prefer, contact Ben Worthy at [email address] or on 020 7679 4974 to ask more about the study.

If you have filled this survey out before, we invite you to fill it out again in light of the recent response to your request.

Navy Command