Information Commissioner criticises water company over failure to respond to EIR requests properly
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has issued a practice recommendation to a water company after finding it was using too "narrow" a definition of 'environmental' to deny Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests.
The recommendation, which was issued on Monday (14 October), revealed repeated failures by North-West-based United Utilities to classify information as environmental, according to regulation 2(1) of the EIR.
"It's important to establish whether information being requested from United Utilities is environmental because United Utilities, as a water and waste water service provider, has an obligation to comply with requests for environmental information, under the EIR, but not non-environmental information, under [the Freedom of Information Act]," the notice said.
Since the company had repeatedly failed to categorise information as environmental, the ICO concluded that it had failed to issue responses to EIR requests within the statutory timeframe of 20 days.
The ICO also raised concerns about the "increasing" number of complaints it had received about the company.
It said the rise in complaints could suggest the company had not adequately trained its staff in what environmental information is.
It also raised concern that United Utilities failed to give sufficient consideration to the proactive publication of environmental information.
The ICO's practice recommendation called on the company to improve its compliance and proactively publish information that is frequently requested.
It also called on the company to improve staff training on handling requests appropriately.
Warren Seddon, Director of FOI at the ICO, said: "Any information that would enlighten the public about how United Utilities operates and the impact it has on the environment is, by its very nature, likely environmental – this includes data on sewage spills and the performance of its wastewater treatment works.
"By using such a narrow interpretation of environmental information, United Utilities is deliberately ignoring the bigger picture to avoid their legal obligations to even consider whether to release the information people are legitimately asking for."
A United Utilities spokesperson said: “We handle hundreds of Environmental Information Requests (EIRs) every year and, in a handful of cases, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) clarified that the information we were asked to provide did fall under the scope of EIR.
“We have followed that clarification since we received it several months ago. We are receiving an increasing number and wider scope of EIRs and have recruited additional and dedicated resources to help us deal with these.
“In the last 12 months, we have issued over 1.5 million lines of data and responded to more than 330 requests.”
Adam Carey
