21st December 2022
Thank you for your request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
We can confirm that Essex County Fire & Rescue Service does hold the information you have requested.
Please see below the answer to your request.
Questions and final response:
Question 1 – 2 Please state how many non-disclosure agreements with former staff at your fire brigade have been signed as part of the process of their employment being terminated in the following years: 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Question 2. For each non-disclosure agreement in answer to Q1, please provide a figure for the total settlement in each case.
The answers to your questions 1 – 2 are contained in the spreadsheet attached.
Question 3. For each non-disclosure agreement in answer to Q1, please provide the role of the individual concerned (e.g., firefighter/crew manager)
I can confirm that we do hold this information, however the information is exempt from disclosure to you.
The information has been withheld due to an exemption in the Freedom of Information Act.
The exemption applicable to the information is: Section 40(2) Personal data of third parties is exempt if disclosure would breach the principles of the Data Protection Act 2018.
We believe that providing you with the information would breach the following Data Protection principles:
• Data shall be fairly and lawfully processed
• Data shall be processed for limited purposes
We are applying this exemption because a) we do not have the consent of the person who is the subject of the information to disclose it to you,
b) disclosure does not meet any of the schedule 2 conditions that would make it “necessary”, and
c) disclosure of the information to you would not be connected to the purpose for which we have collected and are holding the information.
We further believe that the release of the requested information would cause unwarranted interference to the rights and freedoms and legitimate interests of the data subject(s).
Such a disclosure would in our view constitute a breach of Article 8 in the Human Rights Act (the right to privacy and family life). In such circumstances this is an absolute exemption, and this is a refusal notice in respect of your request. ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Incident and other data is published on our transparency site. For further information please follow this link. Incident Data (essex-fire.gov.uk)