NFRS 2023 73 - Control room contact

You asked for

Please treat this email as a formal request for information made under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (which I hereby refer to as "the Act").

I request a direct non-emergency telephone number and email address for your control room (or, where you have more than one control room, the aforementioned for each such control room).

Please note that I am not seeking your switchboard telephone number and that I do not seek to “jump the queue”, so to speak, but simply to make contact directly with your control room in circumstances where that is required without having to engage with your switchboard.

In order to assist, I believe that the telephone number I am seeking is likely to be that on which calls from your switchboard to your control room are forwarded.

Our Response

Answer: - 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.

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 accessibleonly 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 tocommunicate (otherwise than by making the information available for inspection) tomembers 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 doesnot 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’spublication scheme and any payment required is specified in, or determined in accordancewith, 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.

The information requested can be accessed at the following location.

Contact - NFRS (notts-fire.gov.uk)

Get in touch :: Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service (derbys-fire.gov.uk)

Please note that Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service shares its control room with Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service and you may contact the Fire Control specifically for reporting your Controlled Burns/Garden Fire.

Be advised this number is specifically for reporting your Controlled Burns/Garden Fire any other enquiries must be reported via the other contact methods provided above. Calls may be terminated if abused and prosecution may be brought for hoax or malicious false alarm calls.

If you have a fire or rescue emergency, always dial 999 immediately.