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Senior Staff Salaries - 960/11
Dated: 07 Jun 2011
Date of request: 01/12/2011
Date of response: 18/01/2012
Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')(FOIA)
Thank you for your email dated 1 December 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:
"The below relates to both officers and civilian staff.
The number of staff you employed in November 2011 who were paid more than £70000 PA
The number of staff you employed in November 2011 who were paid more than £50000 PA
The total number of staff you employed in November 2011
The total annual salary bill for the staff identified in 3 above.
The names, positions and salaries of all senior staff paid over £70000 pa (to the nearest £5000) For all currently employed staff.
The names, positions and salaries of all senior staff paid over £70000 pa (to the nearest £5000) who have left your organisation within the last 3 years.
For all the staff identified in 6. Above – please sate the amount of any redundancy payments, strain on pension fund payments or other payments made when they left.
By 'paid' I mean salary"
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 Finance Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.
I have decided to disclose the located information to you in as follows.
The number of staff/officers employed in November 2011 whose current salary is greater than £70,000 is 49.
The number of staff/officers employed in November 2011 whose current salary is greater than £50,000 is 239. This includes the 49 employees included in Q1 above.
At 1 December 2011 there were 6,186 Officers and Staff headcount / 5995.78 FTE (Excludes external secondments and career breaks).
The annual salary bill paid to staff/officers based on those employed at 1 December 2011 is estimated at £191.8m. This excludes overtime, national insurance and pension contributions, and other allowances.
Please see the document attached below, which lists those individuals whose salary is £150,000 or more per year by name and rank. Those senior employees (ie, those holding a rank above that of Superintendent or equivalent Police Staff rank) whose salary is £50,000 or more per year but less than £150,000 have been identified by way of job title only as their names will be exempt by virtue of Section 40(2) - Personal information. I have included an explanation of this exemption below.
Also provided within the attached document are details of staff/officers whose final salary exceeded £70,000, by salary band width, the rank, grade and strain on pension funds of leavers between 1 December 2008 and 30 November 2011. No redundancy was paid to these leavers. Please note that information has been provided by salary band and not individual salary payments, as this would be personal information and therefore Section 40(2) would be engaged.
Section 40(2) Personal Information
(Section 40(2) is class based absolute exemption and as such legislators have identified that there would be harm in disclosure and there is no requirement to evidence this or consider the public interest test. However, as Section 40(2) is engaged and in order to make the exemption absolute we need to evidence that a data protection principle would be breached by disclosure. In this case it would not be fair to process information which could lead to the identification of an individual, therefore the first principle of the Data Protection Act would be breached.
As per our response to 6 above.
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.
Downloads
FOI Complaint PolicyFOI 960-11