Ms Daniela Drysdale

Request-7926-23848c7f@whatdo they know.com

Ian Woodman

Director, Maritime and Dangerous Goods

Department for Transport

Zone 2/29

Great Minster House

76 Marsham-street

LONDON

SW1P 4DR

Direct Line: 020 7944 4872

Fax: 020 7944 2165

GTN Code: 3533

[email address]

Web Site: www.dft.gov.uk

17 June 2009

Dear Ms Drysdale

Freedom of Information Request Internal Review

I am writing in response to your email of 21 April 2009 to the Department for Transport seeking an internal review of the handling of your Freedom of Information request dated 10 February 2009 which sought “ correspondence or any other information, in recorded form, referring, in any way, to the website http://mv-derbyshire.blogspot.com or to any of the issues raised/materials published thereon”. In considering your request for an internal review, we have also taken into account your e-mail of 16 March, in which you explained that the first entry of your weblog was posted on 12 October 2008, and suggested the Department should check records dated from October onwards in order to respond to your request.

The Department's internal review of our handling of your Freedom of Information request was conducted, in accordance with Departmental procedures, by the original decision maker and concluded that the original decision should be upheld. The case was then referred to me, as someone who was not involved in any way in the original decision, for a further, independent, review of that decision.

I have now completed my independent review. In doing so, I looked carefully at the web site at http://mv-derbyshire.blogspot.com. I note that this web site includes a number of separate sections, including articles on the non-compliance with standards (a critical look at the Derbyshire's hatch covers) and a summary of the Derbyshire tragedy, making reference to both the circumstances of the loss and the Report of the Final Investigation, as well as three articles relating to the MV Derbyshire presentation held last year. In addition the web site has links to other web sites including Google news. Against this background, I conclude that the original decision maker's conclusion that your request was seeking a broad range of information, including information around the Derbyshire, its loss in 1980, the original Formal Investigation, the Reopened Formal Investigation in 2000 and the presentation hosted on behalf of the Derbyshire Family's Association, was reasonable and that the judgment that the cost of compliance with such a wide-ranging request would exceed the statutory limit established by the Freedom of Information Act 2000 was justified.

In the course of my independent review, I have also considered the impact of confining your request to the information and correspondence recorded by the Department and referring to MV Derbyshire since 12 October 2008. Such information has been concerned largely, but not exclusively, with the organisation and execution of a half-day event on behalf of the Derbyshire Family Association (DFA). The recorded material held by the Department consists of some 200 emails and documents covering the following issues:

Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act provides that a public authority need not comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit, which in the case of government departments is £600. Activities that may be taken into account in estimating whether the limit would be exceeded include extracting the information from the document containing it, including editing or redacting information. In this case, the Department would need, in particular, to take into account the provisions of the Data Protection Act which places restrictions on the release of personal information contained within these emails and documents. Our estimate of the time taken to extract this personal data from all of these emails and documents indicates that the cost of doing so would exceed the statutory limit on costs established by the Act. I should, however, note that we would reconsider your request if you wish to narrow it, for example by relating it to information falling within one of the above categories and that any additional clarification you could provide about the specific information you are seeking would assist us in helping you.

If you are not content with the outcome of this internal review, you have the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

IAN WOODMAN