Arrests, Prosecution and Convictions under Military Byelaws

Simon Brown made this Freedom of Information request to Defence Infrastructure Organisation Automatic anti-spam measures are in place for this older request. Please let us know if a further response is expected or if you are having trouble responding.

Response to this request is long overdue. By law, under all circumstances, Defence Infrastructure Organisation should have responded by now (details). You can complain by requesting an internal review.

Dear Defence Infrastructure Organisation,

I am interested in finding out the following information:
Number of arrests.
Number of convictions.
Offence and applicable Byelaw section for each arrest and any subsequent conviction.

And if recorded:
Approximate location.
Month/year.

For offences committed in the scope of the following Byelaws:

Aldershot and District Military Lands Byelaws (1976).
Ash Ranges Byelaws (1983).
Longmoor Ranges and Demolition Training Area (1982).

Within the following dates:
Records held from 1st Jan 2015 to date of this FOI.
Records held from 1st Jan 2010 to 31st Dec 2015.
Records held from 1st Jan 2000 to 31st Dec 2010.

Should the above scope see the cost of response rise above accepted limits then later data/information is of higher priority than older records, and the additional information of location and date may be limited/omitted accordingly.

Please note personal data - names etc - and any case considered subjudice is specifically out of scope of this request and such information is specifically not requested nor sought.

Please note conviction of an offence is a matter of public record.

Yours faithfully,

Simon Brown

DIO Sec-Parli (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

Dear Mr Brown,

Your request has been logged under our reference 2021/15328 and the target date for response is 14/01/2022.

Yours sincerely

DIO Secretariat

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DIO Sec-Parli (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

1 Attachment

Good afternoon,

Please see the attached response to your request.

Kind regards

DIO Secretariat

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Dear Defence Infrastructure Organisation,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Defence Infrastructure Organisation's handling of my FOI request 'Arrests, Prosecution and Convictions under Military Byelaws'.

For the following reasons the refusal under Section 14 is misplaced:

1. Material of extreme public interest - existence of multiple campaign groups seeking accountability & recreational user survey resulting in 11,000 individual responses. Not a trivial matter.
2. Serious purpose - to review the application of the law by a public body and seeking new information.
3. Requesters aims - legitimate request to publish information supportive of aims and objectives.

There is no evidence the request, or requestor, has sought to irritate or disrupt. Nor is the content or material likely to cause disproportionate levels of distress. Full guidance with respect to vexatious claims can be found here:

https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...

Therefore I believe the refusal on vexatious grounds to be deeply flawed and DIO have failed to meet the criteria for its application and have not applied proportionality or balance.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/a...

Yours faithfully,

Simon Brown

CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

Dear Mr Brown,

We acknowledge receipt of your email of 14 January 2022 in which you asked for an internal review into the handling of your request, our reference FOI2021/15328.

The Department's target for completing internal reviews is 20 working days from date of receipt and we therefore aim to complete the review and respond to you by 11 February 2022. While we are working hard to achieve this, in the interests of providing you with a realistic indication of when you should expect a response, the majority are currently taking between 20 and 40 working days to complete. The review will involve an independent assessment of the handling of the request and the outcome.

Yours sincerely,

MOD Information Rights Compliance Team

Dear CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER),

A response to this FOI, and the subsequent internal review, is now overdue and I would be grateful if the information requested was supplied without further delay.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Brown

Dear CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER),

A response to this FOI, and the subsequent internal review, is now beyond overdue and I would be grateful if the information requested was supplied without further delay.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Brown

CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Brown,

 

Please find attached a response to your request for internal review.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

MOD Information Rights Compliance Team

CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

Dear Mr Brown,

 

We have been made aware that you have appealed the Information
Commissioner’s decision notice issued to you under reference
IC-162312-L7G3 which upheld MODs position that request reference
FOI2021/15328 was vexatious and the MOD was correct to refuse it under
section 14(1) of the Act. We have been invited to join the appeal.

 

However, from a subsequent review of the Department's position, we find
that although we consider your request to be a direct repeat of your first
request reference FOI2021/13847, dated 12 November 2021, it would have
been beneficial for MOD to provide you with some section 16 advice and
assistance to explain the Departments position that your follow up request
which stated “Please note personal data - names etc - and any case
considered subjudice is specifically out of scope of this request and such
information is specifically not requested nor sought” would not
fundamentally change the position on this element of your request. It
should be noted that we were only considering whether we determined your
second request should have engaged section 14(1) of the Act.

 

We are also conscious that we did not consider the application of
exemptions at the internal review stage as you did not request an internal
review of this request. As such, having considered your original request,
we consider it is likely that MOD could have made a section 1 declaration
for at least one element of your request as to whether information is
held. With this in mind, we could ask the DIO reconsider your request
reference FOI2021/13847 and issue you with a fresh response. It would of
course then be open to you to request an internal review of that response,
should you wish to do so.

 

If you would like DIO to reconsider your request, please contact us at
this email address.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

MOD Information Rights Compliance Team

 

 

 

Dear CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER) & MOD Information Rights Compliance Team,

Thank you for your response.

Please forgive me, but I am unable to understand exactly what the previous response actually says?

As it stands I am unable to make an informed decision.

Would it be possible to provide a clear, plain English version free of or with minimal jargon?

Yours sincerely,

Simon Brown

CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

Dear Mr Brown,

To clarify, the initial response neither confirmed nor denied that any information in scope of either part of your request was held under sections 30(3) (criminal investigations and proceedings) and 40(5) (personal data). You chose not to seek an internal review of this request, instead you submitted the same request, but advised that you were not seeking any personal information, and also advising that any convictions is public knowledge. The DIO refused this under section 14(1) of the Act as they felt that repeating your request only hours after receiving the response was vexatious behaviour.

However, on considering the processing of your request we have concluded that had you sought an internal review through my team of your original request, it is likely that we would have overturned at least one element of the original response and confirmed that some information is, or is not held and provided further advice.

Therefore under section 16 of the Act, I have asked the DIO to reconsider your original request reference FOI2021/13847, noting our position above, and to provide you with a fresh response on or before 18 May 2023 which represents 10 working days from the date of this email.

Yours sincerely,

MOD Information Rights Compliance Team

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Dear MOD Information Rights Compliance Team,

With reference to this:

"Therefore under section 16 of the Act, I have asked the DIO to reconsider your original request reference FOI2021/13847, noting our position above, and to provide you with a fresh response on or before 18 May 2023 which represents 10 working days from the date of this email."

I can confirm that DIO have maintained their track record demonstrating an unwillingness or inability to follow basic instruction.

No further correspondence has been received from DIO but it does provide further evidence of consistent behaviour and approach to taxpayers, correct procedure and law.

Yours sincerely,

Simon Brown

CIO-FOI-IR (MULTIUSER), Defence Infrastructure Organisation

1 Attachment

Good morning,

 

Please see attached response from DIO which appears to was sent to the
wrong whatdotheyknow.com strand on 26 May 2023.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

MOD Information Rights Compliance Team