Managing reservoir safety - overdue MIOS

The request was refused by Environment Agency.

Dear Environment Agency,

I refer to your blog - "Managing reservoir safety in England" (James Bevan, Posted on:8 August 2019).

In particular -

Currently there are 15 reservoirs out of 2,072 across England that are Category A and have overdue MIOS.

Please provide the following information related to the 15 reservoirs with overdue MIOS -

1 - The name of the operator.

2 - MIOS description

3 - MIOS deadline date

Yours faithfully,

Allan Richards

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

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National Requests, Environment Agency

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Dear Allan,

 

Thank you for your request for reservoir data.

 

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 NR141163

 

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

Environment Agency

03708 506506

 

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National Requests, Environment Agency

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Dear Mr Richards

 

Re: Request for information about reservoir information.

 

Thank you for your request received on the 29 August, for information
related to the 15 reservoirs with overdue MIOS mentioned in a recent blog.

 

We are unable to provide you with the following - The name of the
operator, MIOS description and MIOS deadline date.

 

We are withholding this information because releasing it would adversely
affect National Security.

 

As a public body we are required under the Freedom of Information
Act/Environmental Information Regulations to give reasons for this
refusal.  We also need to show that we have considered the Public Interest
balance between refusal and disclosure.  You can find the details in the
appendix attached.

If you are not satisfied you can contact us within 2 calendar months to
ask for our decision to be reviewed. We shall review our response to your
request and give you our decision in writing within 40 working days.

 

If you are still not satisfied following this, you can raise a concern
with the Information Commissioner, who is the statutory regulator for
Freedom of Information and the Environmental Information Regulations.  The
contact details are:

 

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK9 5AF

Tel: 0303 123 1113

Website: [1]http://ico.org.uk

 

 

Yours sincerely

 

National Request Team, NCCC

Contact Centre Services - Part of Operations, Regulation & Customer

 

( Tel: 03708 506 506

: Web Site: [2]www.gov.uk/environment-agency

 

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Appendix

 

Relevant exceptions

The exceptions that apply to the withheld information are:

 

EIR regulation 12(5)(a) – We consider that releasing any of the requested
information would adversely affect national security and public safety.

 

The Public Interest Test

 

We have weighed the public interest factors in favour of maintaining the
exception for adverse effect on national security and public safety and
find that they outweigh the public interest factors in disclosing the
information. In carrying out the public interest test we have considered:

 

Factors in favour of releasing the information, in particular the general
presumption of openness. The Environment Agency would only withhold
information if it is sure that disclosure would cause substantial harm.
Here the harm is to public safety which is a serious matter. We have
considered the need to promote accountability and transparency taking
into consideration your interest in this reservoir and interest generally
in ensuring that large raised reservoirs are both safe and maintained. We
have considered whether the information is already public and in the case
of the requested information, it is not. We have considered the
contribution that release of the information would make to public debate
of issues and we recognise your particular interest.

 

We have considered factors in favour of withholding the information, in
particular the strength and number of grounds in the legislation. During
the current heightened status of threat to national security, there is a
high level of public interest in not releasing information that would
result in a threat to public safety. The advice from the Security Service
is that to release key details of the infrastructure or vulnerabilities of
the reservoirs would prejudice the protection and safety of the public
through potential damage or disruption to the national infrastructure by
acts of sabotage.

As indicated, upon assessing the factors in the public interest test, we
have assessed that in relation to the national security exceptions, we
find that the factors in favour of withholding information outweigh the
public interest factors in disclosing the information.

 

 

 

 

 

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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 'Managing reservoir safety - overdue MIOS'.

You have refused this request Under EIR regulation 12(5)(a). You state – "We consider that releasing any of the requested information would adversely affect national security and public safety."

You say "During the current heightened status of threat to national security, there is a high level of public interest in not releasing information that would result in a threat to public safety." This is misleading. The current threat level, is reduced according to the Security Service website ...

You say "The Environment Agency would only withhold information if it is sure that disclosure would cause substantial harm " but fail to say what harm might be caused by the release of this information.

You say "The advice from the Security Service is that to release key details of the infrastructure or vulnerabilities of the reservoirs would prejudice the protection and safety of the public through potential damage or disruption to the national infrastructure by acts of sabotage."

However, the information I have requested does not ask you to disclose details of infrastructure or vulnerabilities.

I would like the reviewing officer to reconsider the refusal taking the above into account.

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

Yours faithfully,

Allan Richards

Enquiries, Unit, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Please note this is an auto reply message.

 

Thank you – the Environment Agency has received your email.

 

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...

 

Freedom of Information Act and Environmental Information Regulations state
that a public authority must respond to requests for information within 20
working days however we always aim to provide an answer as soon as we can.
 

 

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:

[2]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:

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

 

Kind Regards,

 

National Customer Contact Centre - Part of National Operations Services

( Tel: 03708 506 506

: Web Site: [4]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
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National Requests, Environment Agency

5 Attachments

Dear Mr Richards

 

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 18 September 2019.

 

We are treating your email as a request to review our decision to refuse
the information you requested by your email received on 29 August 2019.

 

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 13
November 2019. However, we will try to respond to you well before this
date.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Maria Bisby

Customer Service Adviser, National Requests, NCCC

Contact Centre Services - Part of Operations, Regulation & Customer

 

( Tel: 03708 506 506

: Web Site: [1]www.gov.uk/environment-agency

 

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show quoted sections

National Requests, Environment Agency

6 Attachments

Dear Allan,

 

Enquiry regarding an Internal Review.

 

Thank you for your enquiry which was received on September 18.

 

We respond to requests under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and
Environmental Information Regulations 2004.

 

Please find attached our response.

 

Please get in touch if you have any further queries or contact us within
two months if you’d like us to review the information we have sent.

 

 

Kind Regards

National Request Team

Environment Agency

03708 506506

 

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So how did we do...?

 

Our National Customer Contact Centre relies on customer feedback, so we
really value your thoughts on how we are doing. We will always make
changes where we can to improve our service. This will only take three
minutes to complete:

 

[6]http://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/NCCCcusto...

 

 

 

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

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