NFRS 2023 108 - Wide Area Network

You asked for

Please can you provide me with an update for the WAN contract as it expired in July, also I cannot find the annual spend if you could provide me with the month and year of a report that the annual spend would be available on?

Our Response

Answer: - The contract with GTT Interoute Networks Limited (Managed Service Agreement for Wide Area Network) is still in place and its next review is on 28/07/2024. Additionally spend is published on a monthly basis rather than annual via Expenditure over £250. This is deemed reasonably accessible and is exempt by virtue of section 21 of FOIA.

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.