River Thames sewage

The request was partially successful.

Dear Environment Agency,

FoI request one of three: From records, please supply your most recent estimate of the number of tonnes of sewage thought to be dumped into the River Thames. Output: Number and date of record.

FoI request two of three: From records, please supply details of action your department has taken in the past two years to stop water companies dumping sewage into the River Thames (including fines). Output: Details of action, date of action.

FoI request three of three: Please kindly supply your statement in relation to the River Thames water quality made this year, including any mention of swimming.

Please note this request was originally put to DEFRA who state you hold the information https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/7...

For public reference: Thames is filled with millions of tonnes of sewage each year… but half of Londoners still think it’s safe to swim in https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/t...

Yours faithfully,

Amanda Hart
for Stop UK lies and Corruption.

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Please note this is an auto reply message.

 

Thank you – the Environment Agency has received your email.

 

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which is affecting staff and
resources within the Environment Agency, we may take longer than the
normal 10 working days we aim to reply by.

 

Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations state
that a public authority must respond to requests for information within 20
working days.

 

However due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting staff and resources
we may take longer than the 20 working days to reply. We will aim to
provide an answer as soon as we can.  

 

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help you with your enquiry, if necessary. More details on your rights and
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Environmental Incident

 

If your email was to report an environmental incident i.e. pollution, fish
in distress, dumping of hazardous waste etc. then please call our
Freephone 24 hour Incident Hotline on 0800 80 70 60.   

 

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Kind Regards,

 

National Customer Contact Centre - Part of National Operations Services

( Tel: 03708 506 506

: Web Site: [5]www.gov.uk/environment-agency

 

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National Requests, Environment Agency

Dear Amanda

 

Thank you for your request.

 

We are treating your enquiry as an Information Request under the
Environmental Information Regulations 2004/Freedom of Information Act
2000.

 

Your request will be dealt with by our National Request Team under
reference NR193671.

 

The Environment Agency covers England only.

 

For Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, please see the links below:

 

[1]http://www.sepa.org.uk/

 

[2]http://www.doeni.gov.uk/niea/

 

[3]http://www.naturalresourceswales.gov.uk/

 

If you have provided any personal information (also called personal data)
in your enquiry, the Environment Agency will follow all applicable UK and
EU data protection laws in how we treat it. We may use your information to
help you with your enquiry, if necessary.

 

More details on your rights and how we will process your personal
information can be found in our Personal Information Charter:

 

[4]https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...

 

The Environment Agency’s obligation under the relevant legislation is to
provide you with the requested information within 20 working days from the
date your enquiry is received, but we shall endeavour to respond as soon
as we can.

 

In the meantime should you have any queries regarding this request please
contact us at: [5][email address]

 

Kind regards,

 

National Request Team

National Customer Contact Centre

Tel 03708 506 506

 

 

 

 

show quoted sections

Dear Environment Agency,

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

I am writing to request an internal review of Environment Agency's handling of my FOI request 'River Thames sewage'.

We understand there may be a delay in providing this information but as there have been no changes to the time limits at which we can request an internal review it must therefore be entered today.

You have breached Section 10 of the FoIA.
Section 10 of the Act sets out the time frames within which a public authority must respond to an FOIA request.

* It applies whenever the public authority has:
- a duty under section 1(1)(a) confirm or deny whether the information is held;
- a duty under section 1(1)(b) to provide information that is held to the requester;
- a duty under section 17 to issue a refusal notice explaining why a request has been refused.
* Authorities must respond to requests promptly, and by the twentieth working day following the date of receipt of the request.
* A working day is any day other than a Saturday, Sunday, Christmas Day, Good Friday or a day which is a bank holiday under the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 in any part of the United Kingdom.
* Where required, an authority may claim a reasonable extension of time to consider the public interest test. An extension beyond an additional 20 working days should be exceptional.

You are also reminded it is the Information Commissioner who recommends internal reviews are requested when authorities fail to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. They state it is your chance to report on what went wrong and they see it as your opportunity to set things right.

You are under no legal obligation to complete an internal review, but it is considered 'good practice' to do so as it will help you to avoid further breaches. Should you inform us that you are not completing one, or claim there "is nothing to review", there is no further legal requirement for us to wait any longer. Be advised we would then pass the matter directly to the Information Commissioner.

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,

Amanda Hart
for Stop UK lies and Corruption

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Please note this is an auto reply message.

 

Thank you – the Environment Agency has received your email.

 

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic which is affecting staff and
resources within the Environment Agency, we may take longer than the
normal 10 working days we aim to reply by.

 

Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations state
that a public authority must respond to requests for information within 20
working days.

 

However due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting staff and resources
we may take longer than the 20 working days to reply. We will aim to
provide an answer as soon as we can.  

 

For information on what you can expect from us and our full service
commitment to you then please visit our website: 

[1]https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...

 

If you have made a data request, you may wish to look at
[2]www.data.gov.uk to see if the data you have requested is available
online.
  

Usually we make no charge for providing information. In some cases we may
make a charge for licensed re-use of our data. Where this is the case, we
will notify you in advance.

 

If you have provided any personal information (also called personal data)
in your enquiry, the Environment Agency will follow all applicable UK and
EU data protection laws in how we treat it. We may use your information to
help you with your enquiry, if necessary. More details on your rights and
how we will process your personal information can be found in our Personal
Information Charter:

[3]https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...

 

Environmental Incident

 

If your email was to report an environmental incident i.e. pollution, fish
in distress, dumping of hazardous waste etc. then please call our
Freephone 24 hour Incident Hotline on 0800 80 70 60.   

 

For more details about incident reporting please see our website:

[4]https://www.gov.uk/report-an-environment...

Kind Regards,

 

National Customer Contact Centre - Part of National Operations Services

( Tel: 03708 506 506

: Web Site: [5]www.gov.uk/environment-agency

 

Click an icon to keep in touch with us:-

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Information in this message may be confidential and may be legally
privileged. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify
the sender immediately, delete it and do not copy it to anyone else. We
have checked this email and its attachments for viruses. But you should
still check any attachment before opening it. We may have to make this
message and any reply to it public if asked to under the Freedom of
Information Act, Data Protection Act or for litigation. Email messages and
attachments sent to or from any Environment Agency address may also be
accessed by someone other than the sender or recipient, for business
purposes.

References

Visible links
1. https://www.gov.uk/government/publicatio...
2. http://www.data.gov.uk/
3. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati...
4. https://www.gov.uk/report-an-environment...
5. http://www.gov.uk/environment-agency
6. http://www.facebook.com/environmentagenc...
7. http://www.twitter.com/EnvAgency
8. http://www.youtube.com/EnvironmentAgencyTV
9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/environment...
10. http://www.linkedin.com/company/environm...

National Requests, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Dear Amanda

 

I am writing to you in relation to your request for information
(NR193671), which we received on 12 November 2020.

 

Please be assured that we are looking into your enquiry but have
encountered delays that mean we are not currently in a position to
respond.

Please accept our apologies for this delay. We will be in touch as soon as
we are able.

 

Kind regards

 

National Request Team

National Customer Contact Centre

Contact Centre Services - Part of Operations, Regulation, Monitoring &
Customer

Environment Agency

 

( External:  03708 506 506

 

Follow us on:

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show quoted sections

Dear National Requests,

Thanks for your reply to our request for an internal review. We shall interpret your statement of 'we are not in a position to respond' as a refusal to conduct an internal review at this time.

You are likely aware that an internal review must be requested and refused (or refused pending valid response to Freedom of Information request) before the Information Commissioner will take up the matter.

As the criteria has now been satisfied, the Section 10 breach will now be reported to the Information Commissioner.

Yours sincerely,

Amanda Hart
for Stop UK lies and Corruption.

Amanda Hart left an annotation ()

Reported to ICO

National Requests, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Dear Amanda,

 

RE: Request for a review of a response to an information request under the
Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) / Environmental Information
Regulations 2004 (EIR)

 

Thank you for your email which was received on December 18 2020.

 

We are treating your email as a complaint that in making our response we
did not follow our internal procedures.

 

We are required to provide you with a response to your request for a
review within a maximum of 40 working days which we calculate to
be February 18 2021. However, we will try to respond to you well before
this date.

 

 

Kind regards

 

National Request Team

National Customer Contact Centre

Contact Centre Services - Part of Operations, Regulation, Monitoring &
Customer

Environment Agency

External:  03708 506 506

 

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting staff and resources we may
take longer than the 20 working days to reply. We will aim to provide an
answer as soon as we can.

 

Follow us on:

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Information in this message may be confidential and may be legally
privileged. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify
the sender immediately, delete it and do not copy it to anyone else. We
have checked this email and its attachments for viruses. But you should
still check any attachment before opening it. We may have to make this
message and any reply to it public if asked to under the Freedom of
Information Act, Data Protection Act or for litigation. Email messages and
attachments sent to or from any Environment Agency address may also be
accessed by someone other than the sender or recipient, for business
purposes.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.facebook.com/environmentagenc...
2. http://www.twitter.com/EnvAgency
3. http://www.youtube.com/EnvironmentAgencyTV
4. http://www.flickr.com/photos/environment...
5. http://www.linkedin.com/company/environm...

Amanda Hart left an annotation ()

21st Jan 2021 IC-80520-Y6C8.
ICO has written to authority asking it to respond within 10 working days. It will issue a decision notice if authority fails to do so.

Amanda Hart left an annotation ()

Contact ICO if no response by 4th Feb 2021

KSL Enquiries, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Dear Amanda,

 

Please find attached:

 

-       Our response to your information request under reference NR193671
and three associated attachments

-       Our response to your request for an internal review under NR199947

 

Kind regards,

 

Kent, South London and East Sussex Customers and Engagement team

Information in this message may be confidential and may be legally
privileged. If you have received this message by mistake, please notify
the sender immediately, delete it and do not copy it to anyone else. We
have checked this email and its attachments for viruses. But you should
still check any attachment before opening it. We may have to make this
message and any reply to it public if asked to under the Freedom of
Information Act, Data Protection Act or for litigation. Email messages and
attachments sent to or from any Environment Agency address may also be
accessed by someone other than the sender or recipient, for business
purposes.