FAQ Details
Failure to Notify - 296/11
Dated: 07 Jun 2011
Date of request: 21/04/2011
Date of response: 27/04/2011
Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
Thank you for your email dated 21st April 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:
I would like to know the following: For the past 3 years:
How many people in your force area fell foul of the 172 offence?
How many people did not turn up at court?
How much money was raised in fines on the basis of an assumed income of £350?
How much was raised in total from the 172 offence.
How many people in the region received three letters from the authorities.
What was the cost of postage.
How much does it cost to provide the service to track down motorists who fall foul of the 172 offence.
How many times were balliffs sent out to track down people who did not pay the 172 fines.
How many times were warrants issued to force someone to come to court after a 172 offence.
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 Criminal Justice Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police.
I have today decided to disclose the located information to you as follows.
We are unable to supply the information requested. To provide information which meets the criteria of your request, particularly at question 5, would entail a member of staff interrogating various force systems to identify the respective cases and then check these to see how many had been sent 3 letters . We have estimated that to extract this information would take over 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.
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. Between 01/04/08 - 31/03/11 a total of 3,819 court files were generated by the Fixed Penalty Unit for the offence of fail to provide driver details.
2, 3, 4, 7, 8 & 9. We do not hold this information.
6. As at 2 above, however I can confirm that all forms/letters in respect of identifying the driver go first class.
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