FAQ Details
Riots - 746/11
Dated: 07 Jun 2011
Date of request: 26/09/2011
Date of response: 13/10/2011
Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')(FOIA)
Thank you for your email dated 26th September 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:
Breakdown how many officers from the force were deployed to support the Metropolitan Police, or any other police force, to deal with the riots on each day between August 6 and 10, and a breakdown of where were they deployed;
A breakdown in numbers of officers on each day of how many extra officers were deployed to patrol the streets of your own force area between August 6 and August 10 (in addition to usual police patrol levels);
The total cost of the overtime for the officers deployed to outside your force area between August 6 and August 10;
The total cost of the overtime for the extra officers deployed inside your force area between August 6 and August 10.
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 Operations and Finance Departments of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police however can not be disclosed for the following reason.
To provide information which meets the criteria of your request, particularly at questions 2 would entail a member of staff manually searching all overtime records for the specified period to establish why the overtime was granted. We have estimated that to extract this information would take in excess of over 18 hours for point 2 alone, 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.
6th August - 0
7th August - 0
8th August - 80 to Met
9th August - 160 to Met and 78 to GMP
10th August - 158 to Met
Please note the above figures supersede those released previously.
No information held. The total overtime costs will not be available until all claims are received. It is anticipated that this will not be before November 2011.
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.