Our Ref:
FOI 65/22
Address Correspondence to: J Orange, Information Governance
Date:
25 May 2022
Request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000
Dear Mr McDowel ,
Thank you for contacting the Canal & River Trust with your request for information received
on 26 April 2022.
You have requested the fol owing information:
1) How many boaters have been given notice that they may be subject to the Improper
Mooring Process. What is the breakdown of where these notices have been given (eg
waterway & locality) and the reason given (eg mooring on lock landing)?
2) How many boaters have been subject to Improper Mooring Process enforcement?
3) What is the breakdown in terms of location of where the Improper Mooring Process has
been enforced (eg waterway and locality)
4) What is the breakdown for the reasons that the Improper Mooring Process has been
enforced?
Fol owing receipt of your request the Trust has conducted searches to locate any
information held that is relevant to your request.
Your request has now been ful y considered and the requested information is as fol ows: -
Please see the below table showing cases recorded where a possible Improper Mooring
has been sighted:
Waterway
Boats sighted as possible IM
Ashby Canal
1
Bridgwater & Taunton Canal
1
Coventry Canal
1
Erewash Canal
3
Slough Arm (Grand Union)
1
Paddington Arm (Grand Union)
63
Gloucester & Sharpness Canal
1
Grand Union
26
Hertford Union
18
Kennet & Avon
58
Limehouse Cut
6
Lee Navigation
575
Old River Lea
1
Mon & Brec Canal
1
Oxford Canal
6
Regents Canal
167
Kingswood Arm (North Stratford) 1
North Stratford Canal
3
River Soar
6
River Stort
16
South Stratford Canal
2
Stourbridge Canal
1
Staffs & Worc
5
Upper Trent
2
Worc & Birmingham Canal
4
The below numbers of cases recorded for Improper Mooring:
Waterway
Boats sighted as possible IM
Erewash
1
Paddington Arm (Grand Union)
34
Grand Union
14
Hertford Union
6
Kennet & Avon
25
Limehouse Cut
1
Lee Navigation
259
Oxford Canal
1
Regents Canal
105
River Soar
6
River Stort
6
South Stratford Canal
1
Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal
4
Trent & Mersey Canal
2
Upper Trent
1
Worcester & Birmingham Canal
2
The Canal & River Trust are unable to provide the further information you have requested
as it would be considered exempt by virtue of Section 12.
Section 17 of the Act requires that the Canal & River Trust, when refusing to provide
information (due to application of an exemption) must provide the applicant with a notice
which: (a) states the fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question, (c) states (if that would
not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.
The exemption(s) applicable to the information on this occasion are as fol ows.
Section 12 – Cost of Compliance Exceeds Appropriate Limit
The information you have requested relating to whether a notice was issued and/or the
reason for the improper mooring sighting/case being created is not held in a readily
retrievable format, therefore, to identify this information would require us to manually
review each individual sighting/case detailed above. This would take in excess of 18 hours
to complete. I can advise that is a bout is sighted as improperly moored, either a post card
of notice would be provided to the boater, or a conversation would be had with them.
Therefore, in order to provide the information you have requested would take in excess of
the 18 hours reasonably specified by the Home Office as the time period which should be
allocated by a public authority to comply with a request under the Freedom of
Information Act 2000.
In the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, the current
regulatory limit, set by the Secretary of State for public authorities under Regulation 3, is
£450 for the marginal costs (the costs of finding, sorting, editing or redacting information
and disbursements (printing, photocopying etc.)). The Information Commissioners Office
has set out that al public authorities should calculate the time spent on the permitted
activities at the flat rate of £25 per person, per hour, equating the cost to 18 hours work
per request. For the reasons set out above, it is therefore apparent that within the time
frame of 18 hours, it wil not be possible to extract the information to answer the questions
contained within your request.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal
Notice under Section 12 (1) as the cost of providing the information you have requested
would exceed the amount we are legally required to respond. That is, the cost to locate
and retrieve the information you have requested would exceed the ‘appropriate level’ as
stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004 as
detailed above.
The Canal & River Trust provides you the right to request an internal review under its review
procedure and in line with The FOIA 2000. Internal review requests should be submitted
within two months of the date of this response and should be sent by email
to:
xxxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx or by post to Information Governance Team,
National Waterways Museum El esmere Port, South Pier Road, El esmere Port, Cheshire,
England, CH65 4FW.
You are also able to contact the Information Commissioner if you so wish, details on how
to contact them can be found here:
https://ico.org.uk/global/contact-us/, although please
note they would usually expect you to have gone through our internal review procedure
prior to contacting them.
Yours Faithful y
J Orange
Information Governance Advisor
Legal & Governance
E:
xxxxxxxxxxx.xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx.xx
National Waterways Museum Ellesmere Port, South Pier Road, Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, England,
CH65 4FW
canalrivertrust.org.uk
