FAQ Details
Uniforms - 729/10
Dated: 07 Jun 2011
Date of request: 16/11/2010
Date of response: 24/11/2010
Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
Thank you for your email dated 16 November 2010 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:
Do Northumbria Police provide uniforms for control room staff who are not police officers?
How much does this cost the force per year?
If uniforms are provided to control room staff - will they continue to be provided in view of the cutbacks?
If so, what is the operational requirement for this expenditure when other staff may be losing jobs?
How much is spent by Northumbria Police providing uniform to any other non public facing civilian staff with the force?
Will these staff continue to receive uniform provision in view of the expected cutbacks?
If no uniforms are provided in the above examples, is there a dress code and if so what is it?
In response:
We are unable to supply the information requested. To provide information which meets the criteria of your request, particularly at questions 2 and 5. Departmental spend on uniforms is not broken down between Police Officers and Police Staff. Uniform replacements are issued on a fair wear and tear basis and in order to determine the actual spend on police staff uniforms would entail of manual check of the spend history against each member of staff. 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.
As parts 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.
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. Yes, Northumbria Police provide uniforms to control room staff who are not Police Officers.
3, 4 & 6. The force is currently in the process or reviewing its spend and budgets across a number of different budget areas. No decisions regarding individual budgets have been agreed at this point in time.
7. Not applicable.
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