Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many Environmental Information Regulations relating to sewage cases have been submitted to her Department since 1 January 2005; and how many have been rejected on (a) being manifestly unreasonable, (b) relating to unfinished documents or incomplete at date of receiving and (c) protection of environment.

Defra only retains Environmental Information Regulations (EIR) requests for three years. Cases prior to this have been destroyed in line with our retention schedule.

The number of EIR requests managed in Defra with ‘sewage’ in the case title since 2019 is 14.

a) None of those were refused under regulation 12(4)(b) of the EIRs which relates to manifestly unreasonable.

b) None of those were refused as under regulation 12(4)(d) of the EIRs which relates to material which is still in the course of completion, to unfinished documents or to incomplete data.

c) None of those were refused as under regulation 12(5)(g) of the EIRs which relates to the protection of the environment to which the information relates.