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From: “O’Neill, Liam”
Date: 30 December 2015 16:09:59 WET
To: Alan alanmdransfield
Subject: FOI/46/2015 – Freedom of Information request

Dear
Mr Dransfield,

FREEDOM
OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

I
refer to your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOI) .

You
asked us for:-

1.
an
electronic copy of the HSENI report into the collapsed Wind Turbine in Co
Tyrone in January 2015; and

2.
the
total costs to HSENI spent on this individual incident.

In relation to your 1st request I can advise you Section 44 (1) of
the FOI Act prohibits the release of information where its disclosure is
prohibited by or under any enactment. Under the provisions of Article 30
of the Health and Safety at Work (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, certain
information cannot be released without the consent of the person/s who
furnished it.

As
such, HSENI is unable to disclose any information obtained by an Inspector as a
result of the exercise of his or her powers, except with the consent of the
person who furnished it or, for the purposes of any legal proceedings.

HSENI
has written to the relevant person/s (in this particular case 2 parties were
involved) to seek consent and I can now confirm that one of the parties
involved consented to their information being released whilst the other party
withheld consent. Accordingly, HSENI is able to disclose a limited amount of
information and this is contained in the attached PDF document ‘Screggagh_Report_Redacted.pdf’.

Where
appropriate, the personal information of third parties have been redacted as to
disclose such information would breach the requirement of fairness contained in
the first data protection principle. This has been done under Sections 40(2)
and 40(3)(a)(i) of the Freedom of Information Act.

Additionally,
certain information falls under the exemption provided at Section 30(1)(b) of
the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 30(1)(b) states ‘that any
Information held by a public authority is exempt information if it has at any
time been held by the authority for the purpose of any investigation which is
conducted by the authority and in the circumstances may lead to a decision by
the authority to institute criminal proceedings which the authority has power
to conduct’.

Section
30 is subject to the Public Interest Test and set out below is the test result
table.

PUBLIC
INTEREST TEST – RESULTS TABLE – FOI/46/2015 – FOI Exception 30 (1) (b)

Factors
supporting disclosure

Factors
supporting non-disclosure

There
is a general public interest in information being accessible as:-

  • A means of allowing people to understand the reasons
    for decisions made by public authorities;
  • A way of improving transparency and accountability;
  • A means of allowing people to determine whether HSENI
    has acted appropriately and is discharging its statutory functions.

·
There
is a general public interest in HSENI and its staff having ‘private space’
within which it can discuss/consider how best to discharge the functions of
HSENI. That ‘private space’ allows its staff to formulate and discuss the
advantages and disadvantages of particular courses of actions or how a
particular situation should be best approached.

·
The
absence of this ‘private space’ is likely to result in a general
unwillingness of officials to debate issues fully and frankly. As a result
the quality of record keeping and decision making would be adversely affected.

·
Disclosure
of this type of internal information could be taken out of context and be
used to undermine the quality of HSENI decisions and regulatory activities

Conclusion
: That in all circumstances of the case, the public interest in maintaining the
exception outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information.

In
relation to your 2nd request and I can advise you that HSENI do not
record costs against any particular incidents and therefore we do not hold the
information requested.

If you have any queries about this email, please contact me.
Please remember to quote the reference number above in any future
communications.

I hope
you find this information useful, but if you are dissatisfied with the way in
which HSENI has handled your request, please go to http://www.hseni.gov.uk/about-hseni/content-foi.htm
which explains the actions that are available to you.

Yours
Sincerely

Liam O’Neill
Information Manager
Tel:
028 9054 7088 (ext: 47088)
Mob: 07979365934