NFRS 2022 07 - Formal grievances staff from an ethnic minority background

You asked for:

I am requesting the below under the freedom of information act.

For each of the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 please can you provide figures on the following:

1. How many formal grievances have been raised with the service by members of staff and firefighters from an ethnic minority background regarding complaints of harassment, inappropriate language, behaviour and assault?
2. How many claims have been submitted to employment tribunal regarding the above?
3. How many of those claims have settled prior to a full remedy hearing?
4. What was the settlement figure in each claim?
5. How many of those settlements involved the signing of a non-disclosure agreement?
6. How many grievance/discipline cases have been brought by the service in relation to Inappropriate behaviour/language/conduct* by an employee (*race discrimination or harassment)?

Our Response:

For each of the calendar years 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 please can you provide figures on the following:

1. How many formal grievances have been raised with the service by members of staff and firefighters from an ethnic minority background regarding complaints of harassment, inappropriate language, behaviour and assault?

   Answer: - 2 formal grievances have been raised between the calendar years 2019 to 2022. Please be advised that to prevent any identification of individuals, we've not provided a breakdown of the year they were reported by virtue of section 40(2) Personal information of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

2. How many claims have been submitted to employment tribunal regarding the above?

   Answer: - 1

3. How many of those claims have settled prior to a full remedy hearing?

   Answer: - No Information Held, no claim has been settled prior to a full remedy hearing.

4. What was the settlement figure in each claim?

   Answer: - Not applicable

5. How many of those settlements involved the signing of a non-disclosure agreement?

   Answer: - Not applicable

6. How many grievance/discipline cases have been brought by the service in relation to Inappropriate behaviour/language/conduct* by an employee (*race discrimination or harassment)?

   Answer: - Not applicable

Section 40: - Personal Information

(2) Any information to which a request for information relates is also exempt information if—

1. it constitutes personal data which does not fall within subsection (1), and
2. the first, second or third condition below is satisfied.

(3A) The first condition is that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act—

1. would contravene any of the data protection principles, or
2. would do so if the exemptions in section 24(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018 (manual unstructured data held by public authorities) were disregarded.

(3B) The second condition is that the disclosure of the information to a member of the public otherwise than under this Act would contravene Article 21 of the GDPR (general processing: right to object to processing).

(4A) The third condition is that—

1. on a request under Article 15(1) of the GDPR (general processing: right of access by the data subject) for access to personal data, the information would be withheld in reliance on provision made by or under section 15, 16 or 26 of, or Schedule 2, 3 or 4 to, the Data Protection Act 2018, or
2. (b) on a request under section 45(1)(b) of that Act (law enforcement processing: right of access by the data subject), the information would be withheld in reliance on subsection (4) of that section.

Section 40 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.