FAQ Details
Cost of Investigations - 120/11
Dated: 15 Feb 2011
Date of request: 10/02/2011
Date of response: 15/02/2011
Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act').
Thank you for your email dated 10 February 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:
What is the cost\expenditure to date in full as regards the police operation in apprehending Raoul Moat?
What is the cost\expenditure to date as regards the police operation into the attempted murder of a Mr Martin McGartland?
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 and Resources Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.
I have today decided to disclose the located information to you in part as follows.
1. As the information you have requested is accessible by other means I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You should therefore consider this a refusal for your request.
I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.
Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means
Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.
This information is freely available and is already in the public domain, it can be viewed via the following link:
http://www.northumbria.police.uk/foi/bulwark/costs/index.asp
2. A response to this question has previously been released, and as such the response is classed as being in the public domain. Therefore, I have attached a copy of that response below for your information.
It should be noted that subsequent requests for this information have attracted a Section 14 exemption.
Please note that further requests from yourself on this subject area may be declared vexatious under Section 14 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and we provide an explanation to this exemption.
Section 14 (1) Vexatious Requests - Does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the request is vexatious.
Section 14 (2) Vexatious Requests - Where a public authority has previously complied with a request for information which was made by any person, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent identical or substantially similar request from that person unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between compliance with the previous request and the making of the current request.
However, the ‘reasonable interval’ is not defined but it is suggested that 60 working days may be a useful benchmark.
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
Downloads
FOI Complaint PolicyFOI 120-11