FOI Request - Review of 101003519520 Bin Lorry Accidents
Request 101003542225
Review of 101003519520 Bin Lorry Accidents
I wish to seek a review of your decision to withhold information requested by me under Environmental Information regulations. Your ref 101003519520.
I sought: All information since March 2021 related to personal injury accidents involving bin lorries, either those operating on behalf of the council or private vehicles you are aware of. This should include date and detail of incident, level of injury or fatality and any outcome, either civil or criminal."
In your response, you said you were invoking exception 17 of Foisa because the information was exempt. You say the information is not held but you fail to say why; does this mean there were no such incidents or does it mean incidents may have happened but you have no record of them?
Firstly, I would like to ask why you appear to have answered my request under Foisa and not Environmental Information regulations? As far as I am aware, the exception you have used relates only to Foisa. If you were invoking it under EIRs it would be Section 10. Section 10 is subject to the public interest test and it would appear you have not applied this.
Clearly, the information is held. It is unthinkable that a responsible local authority has no idea of the number of accidents related to bin lorries in this period. These incidents must have been recorded in some way by the local authority, so this should have been provided to me.
Let’s now turn to the public interest test you should have applied. I suggest that even if the exception was correctly applied, under EIRs, the public interest test would fall in favour of disclosure. Again guidelines from SIC state:”The EIRs do not define the term “public interest”, but it has been described as “something which is of serious concern and benefit to the public”. It has also been said that the public interest means what is in the interests of the public, rather than what is of interest to the public (although the two are not always mutually exclusive.)”
I suggest public safety in relation to bin lorry accidents is of serious concern to the public and any improvement in this area would be of benefit to the public. This year sees the 10th anniversary of the Glasgow Bin Lorry tragedy, where six people were killed by a runaway bin lorry.
Last month, an 11-year-old boy was killed by a bin lorry in Edinburgh. This was the reason I have asked all 32 of Scotland’s local authorities for the same information.
These incidents perhaps explain the council’s sensitivity over the issue of bin lorry safety but at the same time, officials must recognise that the conduct and safety of public and private bin collection systems are a legitimate area of inquiry. Surely the public are entitled to know the efficiency of systems paid for by the public purse and, clearly, whether any part of this system shows vulnerability which can lead to a reduction in public safety.
Other councils have managed to inform me - in one case providing details of 20 incidents – so what is different about Moray?
Finally, the SIC states that in carrying out the ‘balancing exercise’ of the public interest test, the authority must take account of the explicit presumption in favour of disclosure in regulation 10(2)(b).
Response 29-04-2024
Following your request for a review (review ref: 101003542225) of your Freedom of Information (FOI) Request - Bin Lorry Accidents (FOI ref: 101003519520), a review meeting was held on 25th April 2024. In attendance were the Information Governance Manager & Data Protection Officer, Acting Fleet Manager, Solicitor, and Information Co-ordinator.
Your FOI Request from 5th March 2024 was discussed.
We reviewed our response of 1st April 2024, including the application of exemptions under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - information not held.
The Panel confirmed that the Council does indeed hold information on personal injury accidents and, having double-checked the records, confirms there were no personal injury accidents recorded, related to the FOI, for the period of time in question. This was expressed in our response to your request for any information held regarding such incidents. The response was nil response - none held, as such Section 17 was applied. We apologise if this was unclear and apologise for any confusion; had the question been for the number of such incidents our response would have been "0".
Regarding your request to receive the information under the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2014, whilst the definition of this information is very wide, it was found that this request was better placed to be answered under the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002, as there was no discernible impact on or interaction of the elements of the environment specific to the request.
In summary, the Council confirms that there were no personal injury accidents involving bin lorries recorded for the period of time in question, as such there is no information held, and we maintain our application of Section 17 of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 - information not held.