Request for Historic Fire Case Data from IRS reoporting system

Dr James Glockling

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,

This is a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 for an electronic (database, CSV, or excel) copy of Fire Statistics data as collected for each case via the Incident Recording System (ref: CLG Document 'Incident Recording System – Questions and Lists Version 1.6 – (XML Schemas v1-0p)' from inception to the half-year ending 30th June 2015. Under section 7 of that law, you are obliged to make a copy available to the public.

As a model of how well such case data can be provided to the public with locational details I would example the Police Crime dataset that is freely distributed from https://data.police.uk/.

My request is for full 'case data' that might enable the Fire Protection Association, as the UK's National Fire Safety Organisation and key member of the Fire Sector Federation, to undertake case-by-case cause and effect analyses in association with our own case datasets to better understand fire loss issues and use this knowledge to support our own research and development and provision of risk control guidance. Cognisant of the need to protect the identities of persons involved I request the exclusion the following question answers from the data you provide: 1.4, 5.23-5.30, 6.3, 8.31-8.34, 9.17-9.19, 9.23.

The Fire Protection Association is the UK National Fire Safety Organisation, a not-for-profit company promoting fire safety in the home and resilient and safe business within the UK. We invest around £1M per year in this research and distribute our work freely (see www.RISCAuthority.co.uk & www.theFPA.co.uk). Access to this data by us (and other organisations) is considered paramount to achieving our goals and it remains odd to us that in this time of openness access to it remains so elusive. We historically negotiated access to this dataset under direction from DCLG to seek approval from all CFO's which was achieved with the grateful assistance of CFO - this document, which was never honoured, can be made available to you as part of this FOI request if of interest.

Yours faithfully,

Dr James Glockling, Technical Director, Fire Protection Association

Adebola Dada,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 1296527             Information request

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Please find attached an acknowledgement of your information request
Yours sincerely
 
 
Adebola Dada
 
 
[email address]

Adebola Dada,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 1296527             Information request

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Dear Dr Glocking
 
Thank you for your request for information received on 4 August 2015.
 
Please find attached our response to your request.
 
Knowledge and Information Access Team
Department for Communities and Local Government
 
NOTE: Please do not edit the subject line when replying to this email.

Dear Department for Communities and Local Government,
Knowledge and Information Access Team
1st FloorNW, Fry Building
2 Marsham Street
London, SW1P 4DF

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Department for Communities and Local Government's handling of my FOI request 'Request for Historic Fire Case Data from IRS reoporting system'.

Thank you very much for your response although I, and many others are extremely disappointed with your decision to withhold the information. If I may take each of your stated reasons for exemptions in turn:

You state "The department has made it clear that it intends to publish in due course, therefore the information is exempt from disclosure under Section 22(1) of the Freedom of information Act..."

My objections to this are 3-fold:

(a) It is unclear from this statement if what 'the department intends to publish' is the specific dataset I am asking for. Without guarantee that this sentence is related to my request, and that my request will be wholly satisfied upon eventual release, I risk waiting over a year to receive data unrelated to my request, or not complete enough to be useful to my endeavours. I believe your response must legally be linked to the specifics of my request; which it is not. I have been very specific in my request of the fields of the IRS database I wish to have access to. Out of fairness (and I believe you are legally obliged) I would like the response to relate to the specifics of my request.

(b) My second point is that I have had assurances of receiving this data since 2010 when, in accordance with DCLG's instruction to me then I was to seek the authority to access the data from each F&RS (I was told then that they owned the data). This was achieved on 16/06/2010 following great effort and expense on FPAS's part and with great assistance from CFOA with the signing of the DATA SHARING PROTOCOL with FPA. When presented to DCLG this was not honoured. Please forgive me for becoming impatient but given the history behind this a promise of 'intent to publish', which has existed for as long as I can remember, could be viewed as another delay tactic.

(c) DCLG already allow many groups to access this data. It supports all AD'B' Fire development work and is provided in full to groups conducting work on behalf of DCLG (such as BRE). Access is also provided to others conducting their own projects also, such as the recent Business Sprinkler Alliance work on the Cost benefit of Sprinkler Systems. I am obviously interested to know why the data might be fit for release currently for these purposes, but not for others or public consumption? (this also suggests the data is already quality assured - which you state later is another barrier to release)

Additionally you state that currently 'maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the interest at this time'. I object to this for the following reasons:

(a) The government itself has asked industry to determine Fire Policy for the UK going forward and this role is admirably handled by the Fire Sector Federation. The costs in terms of time and effort supporting this are immense yet the provision of basic statistical toolsets, a requirement to support any government initiative or policy change are being withheld from them by the rejection of this request. How is it in the public interest to hinder the work of the very groups set up to undertake life-safety relevant work formerly conducted by government?

(b) There are currently some ground-breaking projects on going seeking to tackle urgent issues that demand access to this dataset as described in my request. As an example I would site the on-going problems with unwanted and false automatically generated alarms. Such is the problem that many F&RS' are not turning out for them - risking making 'a very big mistake' every time; those that are turning out might be wasting large sums of already scant money; insurers now give no credit for their installation since they may not receive a FRS response; and users are turning the systems off to reduce the inconvenience of disruption and risk of FRS fines for false call out. Pivotal to understanding the situation and seeking a solution is access to the IRS data requested. Again I would ask, how is withholding this data for such an urgent issue (one of many) in the public interest?

To summarise, I would like to challenge the reasons for withholding this information on the grounds that the reasons given do not relate to my request and I do not agree that their continued restriction best serves the public interest. A loose 'promise to publish' an unspecified dataset unrelated to the specifics of my FOI request in over a years time, by which time FOI policy may have changed (I understand many are calling for its review), is not an acceptable response to my request.

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

Yours faithfully,

Dr James LD Glockling
Technical Director, Fire Protection Association

Juliet Voss,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 1296527             Information request

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Dr Glockling

Please see the attached acknowledgement.
Yours sincerely
  
Juliet Voss
 
0303 444 2222
[email address]

Juliet Voss,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 1296527             Information request

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Dear Dr Glockling

Please see the attached regarding your internal review request.
Yours sincerely
 
 
Juliet Voss
 
0303 444 2222
[email address]

Dr James Glockling

Dear Juliet Voss,

Very many thanks for your reply. Although the delay is disappointing I hope that the added time will enable my request for data to be granted as outlined within this chain of correspondence.

Yours sincerely,

Dr James Glockling

Juliet Voss,

1 Attachment

                            
Our reference: 1296527             Information request
Dear Dr Glockling

Please find attached my response to your internal review request.
Yours sincerely
 
 Juliet Voss
 
0303 444 2222
[email address]