FAQ Details
Business Interests - 541/11
Dated: 07 Jun 2011
Date of request: 19/07/2011
Date of response: 04/08/2011
Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
Thank you for your email dated 8th July 2011 in which you made a request for access to certain information which may be held by Northumbria Police.
As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.
You asked:
Please provide a copy of chief constable Sue Sim’s register of business interests.
Any documentation relating to meetings with outside bodies/business and organisations, to include a diary of such meetings if available, since her appointment to the post. Please also provide the information covering Ms Sim’s time as temporary chief constable.
Please also provide the same list of business interests for the full chief constable team for the last two 12 month periods.
All meetings with non-Northumbria Police staff for the full chief constable team for the last two 12 month periods.
In response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Chief Officer Team of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police, however we are unable to supply for the following reason.
To provide information which meets the criteria of your request, particularly at questions 2 & 4, would entail a member of staff manually searching diary entries and extracting information which referred to meetings with outside bodies, businesses and organisations. We have estimated that to extract this information would take over the prescribed 18 hours, therefore Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act would apply. This section does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to £450.00
You should consider this to be a refusal notice under section 17 of the Act for that part of your request.
As part of your request would exceed the prescribed limit, as defined by the Act, there is no requirement for Northumbria Police to provide a response to the remaining parts of your request. However, in order to provide you with some assistance, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, information that may be provided within the time constraints would be question 2 only, for a reduced time frame of 6 months.
You may wish to re-define and resubmit your request accordingly.
Although excess cost removes Northumbria Police's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information below, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request.
1&3. No information held. The Chief Constable and Deputy and Assistant Chief Constables have no business interests.
For your information details of business interests is freely available on the Northumbria Police website. I have supplied the relevant link below:
http://www.northumbria.police.uk/
The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.
How to complain
If you are unhappy with our decision or do not consider that we have handled your request properly and we are unable to resolve this issue informally, you are entitled to make a formal complaint to us under our complaints procedure which can be found at: http://www.northumbria.police.uk/foi/disclosurelog/foicomprights.asp
If you are still unhappy after we have investigated your complaint and reported to you the outcome, you may complain directly to the Information Commissioner’s Office and request that they investigate to ascertain whether we have dealt with your request in accordance with the Act.
Yours sincerely
Michael Cleugh
Data Protection and Disclosure Advisor
Direct Dial: 01661 868347