Reference number: FOI2020/01011

Dear Mr Baker,

Information request

Your correspondence was received by Network Rail on 28 August 2020. I can confirm that your request is being processed under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)/Environmental Information Regulations (EIR). I will endeavour to respond to you as soon as possible and in any event by 28 September 2020.

On occasion we may need to consult with third parties about requests, in line with the recommendations in the Code of Practice issued by the Cabinet Office.

Please remember to quote your reference number in all future communications.

Yours sincerely,

Danielle Stratton | Information Officer
Freedom of Information Team | Legal & Corporate Services

Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN
Email [Network Rail request email] |
Web http://www.networkrail.co.uk/foi/

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Reference number: FOI2020/01011

Dear Mr Baker,

Please find attached our response to your Freedom of Information request.

You will be able to access the documents being disclosed with your request via the link below:

https://networkrail-my.sharepoint.com/pe...

Please let me know if you have any problems accessing these documents.

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

Yours sincerely,

Danielle Stratton | Information Officer
Freedom of Information Team | Legal Corporate Services

Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN
Email [Network Rail request email] |
Web http://www.networkrail.co.uk/foi/

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Stratton Danielle shared a folder with you
Here's the folder that Stratton Danielle shared with you.
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Dear Mr Baker,

Thank you for your email of the 8 October 2020 which I have logged as a request for an internal review of decision FOI2020/01011. The purpose of the internal review procedure is to provide a fair, thorough and independent review of the handling of your request under the Environmental Information Regulations 2004. The internal review will be completed by Lou Lander, Head of Freedom of Information.

In accordance with regulation 11(4) of the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, Lou will complete the review no later than 40 working days from the date of your complaint, in this case by 4 December 2020.

If you have any queries about the internal review, please contact Lou Lander via the FOI inbox quoting reference IR2020/01180.

Yours sincerely,

Danielle Stratton | Information Officer
Freedom of Information Team | Legal Corporate Services

Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN
Email [Network Rail request email] |
Web http://www.networkrail.co.uk/foi/

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Dear Mr Baker

I am responding to your email of 8 October 2020 to provide the results of the Internal Review of your request FOI2020/01011.

There are several points within the law which I will need to refer to, but most importantly, I hope to have identified the way forward that will be most useful to you.

The points you raised for review were:

1. The information provided contained large amounts of data which had not been requested, particularly:
- only 12 of 135 photographs provided were within the date range you specified. [Your request gave this date range as being 1/4/2019 and 28/8/2020]
- you received information for the years 2003, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 which you had not requested
2. The information in the inspection reports for the relevant time period was " unacceptably scant and jumbled."
3. You believed that "much of the detail from those inspections has been held back."
4. The reply to this review should be "supplied in the form of .pdf files, available in the public domain"

I will set out my review for each of these points, and in each case I will also outline whether there is then an action for us to take under our regulation 16 duty to assist. I hope that these actions will resolve your complaint. I will also include your appeal rights at the end of this review, should you wish to take your complaint further to the Information Commissioner.

Point 1: The information provided to you in the earthwork examination/inspection reports contained information you had not requested.

REVIEW: It is an interesting point for this review that a requester has raised a complaint that they have received 'too much' information that they did not ask for; we regularly receive requests and provide information for earthworks inspections, and this is a point that has not been raised previously.

For this review, I have viewed and considered the inspection reports that you received in response to your request. I agree that they contain not only details of the most recent inspection, but also details from previous inspections, including the photographs and information from the earlier years which fell outside the time period (which you had specified as being 1/4/2019 to 28/8/2020). However, this is due to the fact that, when details of earthworks and soil cuttings inspections are extracted from the database where this information is held and managed, the information entered into the database for previous years becomes part of the most recent report; the middle section for the new inspection report will contain relevant data for the location entered by previous inspections. Effectively then, the inspection reports provided to you were indeed the information that Network Rail holds that meets your request. I should also explain that the Environmental Information Regulations grants access to the recorded information that a public authority holds; these reports have been downloaded directly from the database that earthwork inspection information is recorded on, so they are indeed the information that we record and hold. They contain each of the fields that have been entered for the most recent inspection.

From your email of 8 October 2020, it is clear that you do not consider the photographs and historic sections of the earthworks inspections as being relevant to your request. On this basis, I have been through each of the inspection reports and removed those sections, barring where one or two older photographs appear in isolation within the most recent report. Please note, I am providing here some information which falls outside the scope of your original request. You mentioned that you only wished to receive inspections undertaken until 28/08/20, however, from viewing the reports I can see that the " Previous Inspection Work Items" section indicates where inspections attempted in March 2020 could not be completed until vegetation management had been undertaken. This means that the inspection itself did not take place until 12 September 2020. While I appreciate this is outside the date range you gave, I thought that you would want the most recent inspection to be provided so I have included this.

Point 2: The information in the inspection reports for the relevant time period was " unacceptably scant and jumbled".

REVIEW: As explained above, the earthworks examinations reports are downloaded directly from our earthworks management database - we are required to provide the recorded information that we hold, and in terms of this requirement, the reports do fulfil our legal obligation in this regard. The inspection reports contain all the relevant information as it is entered in the fields on the database. However, I have reviewed the wider range of information provided to you, and I agree that further indication of what information was being disclosed should have been given to you both within our response and in the titles of the documents disclosed to you. I provide further details below.

The earthworks examinations and drainage inspection spreadsheet are now indicated. I have also removed all photographs relating to the Tunnel area as you indicated that you did not wish to receive these in your original request and these should not have been provided.

There are three earthworks reports for the three sections of the railway (two for the 'up' side and one for the 'down' side) which fall within the area you specified. We have not provided the report for the 0550 'down' side, as this concerns the Tunnel, which you did not wish to be included in your request.

We also provide a spreadsheet in excel form containing the details for the drainage inspections for the location, and a document containing the Boundary and Vegetation inspections.

The three relevant photographs of features, and the accompanying 'Key signs' document explaining these features, are included in a separate folder.

These disclosures will be made through 6 separate emails.

3. You believed that "much of the detail from those inspections has been held back."

REVIEW: In the earthwork inspection reports provided to you, the names of the employees who carried out the inspections were removed under regulation 13(1); these are indicted by the term "redacted" throughout the reports. For the staff names themselves, this redaction is appropriate; however, I can see that when a name has been "redacted" from the "Comments" and "Historic Comments" sections, the whole text has been removed rather than simply the name contained within it. This was an error; while the Comments sections do contain employee names, only these should have been removed - the comments themselves should have been provided. I will address this below.

I have drawn the reports from the earthworks database again and we will re-issue these to you again; only the names of staff will continue to be withheld under regulation 13(1). The Comments which had previously been removed in error will be provided.

I have made further enquiries and have located no further inspections beyond those already provided to you. As with the earthworks inspections, I am re-issuing the information previously provided with this review to your whatdotheyknow address.

4. The reply to this review should be "supplied in the form of .pdf files, available in the public domain"

REVIEW: I note that due to the size of the files that were disclosed to you, the information was initially provided to you by way of file-sharing. I appreciate that this was not the format you have subsequently indicated that you wish the information to be provided in, however, I consider that this was reasonable in the circumstances to disclose the information in this way - the individual documents were too large to be sent without splitting them into numerous separate emails, and without splitting the documents themselves; through the file-share, the information was disclosed and was available for you to access and re-circulate as you wished.

However, now we have removed the older photographs from the earthworks inspections, the size of these reports is greatly reduced and we are providing them in a series of separate emails directly to you. Please note that the excel spreadsheet containing the drainage inspections information does not format well as a pdf document, so I have provided this in its original format. Please let me know if there are any issues with accessing this information.

I hope that this will be useful for you. I did consider whether it might be useful to also provide you with the relevant Network Rail standards for each of the inspections - as these will provide further information on the way these inspections are conducted and recorded. However, these are highly technical - and lengthy - documents in their own right. Rather than risk providing further information that you may not wish to receive, I leave it open to you to let us know if it would be useful to receive these documents, and if so, we will provide them to you.

Yours sincerely

Lou Lander
Head of Freedom of Information

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Earthwork Inspection SJC_8_0550_UP_redacted_opt

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[1]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[2]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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Earthwork Inspection SJC_8_0440_UP_redacted_opt

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[1]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[2]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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Earthwork Inspections SJC_8_0440_DOWN_redacted_opt

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[1]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[2]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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Boundary and vegetation inspection

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[1]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[2]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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Drainage inspections

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[1]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[2]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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Three photographs and key

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[1]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[2]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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Appeal rights

If you are not content with the outcome of this internal review, you have
the right to apply directly to the Information Commissioner for a
decision. The Information Commissioner can be contacted at:

Information Commissioner's Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire SK9 5AF

You can also contact the ICO through the 'Make a Complaint' section of
their website on this link: [1]https://ico.org.uk/make-a-complaint/

The relevant section to select will be "Official or Public Information".

Yours sincerely

Lou Lander

Dr Lou Lander | Head of FOI

[2]Network Rail | The Quadrant: MK | Elder Gate | Milton Keynes | MK9 1EN

Mobile | 07710959956

[3]cid:image002.png@01D567D9.F9EB76E0

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