Further Request on the Middlewich Breach

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

Dear Canal & River Trust

In my request of 13 November, I said:

'Please can you supply the engineers survey & investigation reports which the C&RT have which relate to the cause of the breach which occurred on 15th March 2018 between the Wardle Lock & Stanthorne Lock, in Middlewich.'

I am again requesting the information regarding the investigation report on the basis that it is now complete or, alternatively, it is now in the public interest to disclose it.

Thanks

Freddy Brown

Dear Canal & River Trust,

A response to this request is now overdue according to whatdotheyknow.com. Please respond within the next 24 hours.

Yours faithfully,

Freddy Brown

Information Request, Canal & River Trust

Dear Freddy,

Thank you for contacting The Canal & River Trust.

I can confirm that a response was provided at 07:48 AM.

If you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Micah Mutsani
Information Governance, Audit and Risk Intern – Legal and Governance Services
T 0113 281 6816; M 07484913020
E [email address]
W canalrivertrust.org.uk
Canal & River Trust, Fearns Wharf, Neptune Street, Leeds, LS9 8PB

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Dear Canal & River Trust

You may be mixing up this request with another.

A full history of this request can be found at -

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/f...

As you will see from the history, you have not provided me with the two reports that you say you hold.

Yours sincerely,

Freddy Brown

Information Request, Canal & River Trust

Dear Mr Brown,

Please accept my apologies for the mix up. The response sent at 07:48 was to one of your other requests for information regarding the Middlewich breach.

Your email received on the 3rd March requests the same information requested in an earlier request for information submitted in November 2018. You have complained to the Information Commissioner about this case and we are currently waiting for the commissioners investigation to commence. Since you are requesting the same information for a request where the information commissioner is investigating at your request I have not logged this as a new request for information.

Many Thanks

Melissa Ashdown-Hoff
Information Officer – Legal and Governance Services
T 0113 284 5239; M 07484913020
E [email address]
W canalrivertrust.org.uk
Canal & River Trust, Fearns Wharf, Neptune Street, Leeds, LS9 8PB

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Dear Canal and River Trust,

This request is for a subset of information previously requested. The complaint to which you refer does not relate to the information now requested. Even if it did, there is no reason not to respond to this request within 20 working days. The basis on which the request was made, more that three months after a previous request, was plainly stated:

I am again requesting the information regarding the investigation report on the basis that it is now complete or, alternatively, it is now in the public interest to disclose it.

Please provide me with the report or a refusal notice such that I can progress this matter.

Yours sincerely,

Freddy Brown

Dear Canal & River Trust,

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

Further to yesterdays communication, I am writing to formally request an internal review of Canal & River Trust's handling of my FOI request 'Further Request on the Middlewich Breach'.

I would like the reviewing manager to:
- investigate why the Trust failed to respond within 20 days.
- provide me with the requested report or a refusal notice which includes the public interest test.

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

Please confirm who will be carrying out this review within two working days.

Yours faithfully,

Freddy Brown

Dear Canal & River Trust,

I made an information request on 3 March asking for a copy of an inspection report which you state that you hold. You failed to provide me with the information or a refusal notice within 20 working days.

On 5 April, I asked you to provide me with the report or a refusal notice such that I could progress the matter.

On 6 April, I requested a review. I asked that the reviewing manager to:
- investigate why the Trust failed to respond within 20 days.
- provide me with the requested report or a refusal notice which includes the public interest test.

To date, I have received no response. This despite asking you to confirm who would be carrying out the review within two working days.

Yours faithfully,

Freddy Brown

Freddy Brown left an annotation ()

A complaint was made to the Information Commissioners Office on 22nd March that Canal and River Trust failed to respond to this request within 20 working days as required by law.

I have asked the Information Commissioner to issue a decision notice that the Trust failed to respond to this request within 20 working days.

Tom Deards, Canal & River Trust

This message has been hidden. We have removed this response from public view because the attached ICO Decision Notice contains personal information of the requester which they did not expect to be made public. A replacement, correctly redacted response is in the two emails below. If you are the requester, then you may sign in to view the message. Please contact us if you have any questions.

Information Request, Canal & River Trust

1 Attachment

Dear Mr Brown,

I refer to the decision of the ICO dated 22 May (attached) which required
the Trust to respond to your request of 15 March in accordance with the
EIR within 35 calendar days of that decision notice. I am happy to treat
this as an internal review of our original response on 5 April.

I attach a copy of my internal review of your earlier similar request
dated 1 February. I confirm that the information you have requested is
still in draft form and, therefore, the Trust is withholding this
information on the basis of the same exemption, applying the public
interest in the same way.

I understand that our Engineering team are reaching the end of their
investigations and, therefore, we will consider whether to disclose this
report to you and Mr Brown when the report is finalised shortly.

I should add that we may consider some or all of this report to be exempt
under Regulation 12(5)(a) EIR on the basis that it may not be in the
public interest for the report (that could expose the detail of the
vulnerability of our large water retaining structures to possible
malicious intent) to be made public on grounds of public safety.

Although the ICO have already intervened in respect of the handling of
this request, I would imagine that if you remain dissatisfied with the
substance of this response, you may refer this to the ICO again. 

Please note this response is being resent with the redacted decision
notice.

 

Kind regards

 

Tom Deards

Head of Legal & Governance Services

Canal & River Trust, First Floor North, Station House, 500 Elder Gate,
Milton Keynes, MK9 1BB

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Information Request, Canal & River Trust

8 Attachments

Hi team,

 

Please see email trail below, can you please action as requested by my
colleague Frazer on the 8^th April.

 

Many thanks

Indy

 

From: WhatDoTheyKnow Support <[WhatDoTheyKnow contact email]>
Sent: 09 April 2020 12:13
To: Information Request <[Canal &amp; River Trust request email]>
Cc: Indy Virdee <[email address]>
Subject: Re: Personal Data Concern

 

CAUTION: This email originated from an external source. DO NOT CLICK/OPEN
links or attachments unless you are certain of their origin.

Hi Indi,

 

Thanks for this, however could you send it to the requester at the request
email address please as opposed to the support team

 

To do this, the response will need to be sent
to  [1][FOI #557906 email]

 

Kind regards,

 

Matt

 
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WhatDoTheyKnow.com Support Team

WhatDoTheyKnow is a project of mySociety and run by Volunteers
Project of a registered charity
Donate to help us maintain this site:
[2]https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/help/volu...

Find out more about how we handle your data at:
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Freddy Brown left an annotation ()

On 21 June 2019, CRT's Tom Deards, head of legal & governance services, company secretary and data protection officer posted some of my personal information in a decision notice. The decision notice, which upheld my complaint, confirmed that CRT had failed to respond to this request within 20 working days as required by law and stated -

The public authority must take these steps within 35 calendar days of the date of this decision notice. Failure to comply may result in the Commissioner making written certification of this fact to the High Court pursuant to section 54 of the Act and may be dealt with as a contempt of court.

CRT failed to correct its data breach until today, forced to do so by the Information Commissioner -

Mr Freddy Brown
Sent by email only to: xxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxx
23 March 2020
Case Reference Number: RFA0896826

Dear Mr Brown

Thank you for your correspondence in which you have complained about the Canal and River Trust (the CRT). Please accept my apologies for the delay in our response, owing to the large volume of complaints we are currently receiving.
The ICO’s role

Part of our role is to consider complaints from individuals who believe there has been an infringement of their data protection rights. Our role is to consider whether there is an opportunity to improve the information rights practices of organisations. We may not investigate or adjudicate on every individual complaint.

We will put most of our effort into dealing with matters we think give us the best opportunity to make a significant difference to an organisation’s information rights practices.

It is up to us to decide whether or not we should take further action. Even where we decide that further action is not required at the moment, perhaps because the organisation has made a mistake but is working to put things right, we will keep concerns on file. This will help us over time to build a picture of an organisation’s information rights practices.

Our decision will not affect your ability to enforce your rights through the courts.

Your complaint

The Commissioner issued the CRT with a decision notice in relation to your Freedom of Information complaint on 22 May 2019. When the ICO served the CRT with the decision notice, it stated that “the Commissioner will publish this decision on the ICO website, but will remove all names and addresses of complainants. If you choose to also reproduce this decision notice, then the Commissioner expects similar steps to be taken.”

You contacted the ICO and explained that the CRT has published a copy of the Commissioner’s decision notice without removing your name and email address.

You have referred to the following link:
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/f...
In correspondence with you regarding this issue, the CRT advised that it had contacted WhatDoTheyKnow (WDTK) in order to resolve the matter, and that it may also be beneficial if you contacted WDTK in order to hasten the removal of the information in question.

You contacted WDTK and it advised that if it received a suitable redacted copy of the document, it would offer assistance in replacing it on its website.

It appears the document in question is still in place on WDTK’s website, and it is unclear what further action has been taken.
Our view I have considered the information available in relation to this complaint, and I am of the view that the CRT has failed to comply with its data protection obligations in this matter. The General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR) requires that organisations process personal data in a fair and secure manner. In our view, CRT has unfairly processed your personal data as you would not reasonably expect it to be processed in this way, and this disclosure has allowed unauthorised access to the data in question.

In light of the above, I have written to the CRT to inform it of our view and to advise that it should take the following action:

• Provide WDTK with a suitably redacted copy of the document in question, in order that your details may be removed from the website.

• Advise you of the action it has taken to resolve this matter, and, once
resolved, confirm this to you in writing.

It is appreciated that current circumstances and resources may limit how quickly the CRT is now able to respond, however I have advised that it should take the above action as soon as it is possible to do so.
We do not intend to take any further action at this stage in regard to this complaint, however a record will be kept on file in order to help inform our view of the way the CRT handles personal data.
Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention.

Yours sincerely
Phillip Marsh
Lead Case Officer
Information Commissioner’s Office