NFRS 2022 62 - Abbey Glen Laundry

You asked for:

Initial Response 29/09/2022:

In early 2020 your fire appliances attended a severe fire at Abbey Glen Laundry on Kilton Terrace Worksop. I, and several dozen residents, have Abbey Glen on our doorstep now, here in Sheffield. Literally 30’ away from our houses. Their new building has a sprinkler system, but they plan to store 100s of trollies full of laundry outside next to wood. We are terrified that what happened at Worksop could happen here. Please could you send me any information you have on the Worksop fire.

Clarification Response 30/09/2022:

Based on our concerns over this company now operating in Sheffield we are requesting the following A Fire Incident Report, A Fire Inspection Report and A Risk Assessment (which will no doubt have been carried out by Notts Fire Service sometime prior to the fire) and its findings. This is simply to prevent a feared potentially similar problem of fire (due to outside storage) in Sheffield

Our Response:

Answer: -

A Fire Incident Report:

The information requested has been deemed exempt by virtue of section 21(1) Information reasonably accessible by other means, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The information is deemed a chargeable service and Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service will not be obligated to supply the information as it is deemed exempt. If you want a copy of a fire report, please contact us via our contact page. We only release fire reports to people or organisations with a legal interest in the report. We charge £75 for fire reports.

21. Information accessible to applicant by other means.

1. Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under section 1 is exempt information.
2. For the purposes of subsection (1)—
   1. Information may be reasonably accessible to the applicant even though it is accessible only on payment, and
   2. Information is to be taken to be reasonably accessible to the applicant if it is information which the public authority or any other person is obliged by or under any enactment to communicate (otherwise than by making the information available for inspection) to members of the public on request, whether free of charge or on payment.
3. For the purposes of subsection (1), information which is held by a public authority and does not fall within subsection (2)(b) is not to be regarded as reasonably accessible to the applicant merely because the information is available from the public authority itself on request, unless the information is made available in accordance with the authority’s publication scheme and any payment required is specified in, or determined in accordance with, the scheme.

Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is categorised as an Absolute and Class Based type exemption and therefore does not require a public interest test to be carried nor must Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service articulate the harm in disclosure.

A Fire Inspection Report:

No Information Held, the last ‘Fire Inspection Report’ or Risk Inspection recorded for the property occurred in 2009. The version of system used to record this information is now a legacy version, this means that we have limited access to the data and no report can be located or pulled from the system as a result.

A Risk Assessment:

No Information Held, we do not have a Fire Risk Assessment produced by the company cited saved against the Premises record.