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NFRS 2024 21 - Assaults on firefighters

You asked for:

Please could I have the following information:

  1. How many assaults against firefighters were recorded in each of the last five years, 2019/2020/2021/2022/2023.
  2. Could I have a geographic breakdown of where the assaults occurred.
  3. Could I have a brief description of the nature of the assault.

Our Response:

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 1is 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 informationwhich 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 theapplicant merely because the information is available from the public authority itself onrequest, 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.

Fire statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk) / FIRE0510: Attacks on firefighters during operational incidents