FOI/1966 Establishment Data

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your email received on the 1 December 2025 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 at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request, and we provide a response for your attention.

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the People Services Department of Northumbria Police.  We can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

We are able to disclose the located information to you as follows.

You asked:

Under the FOIA 2000, please could you provide the total officer numbers by (a) total and (b) frontline as at (i) 30 June 2024 and (ii) 30 September 2025 for your force?

As part of the information you have requested is accessible by other means we 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 notice for this part of your request.

We 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.

The information you have requested in relation to total and frontline officer numbers is freely available for all to view, as it is published on the GOV.UK website.  In order to aid and assist you further we have provided a link to the relevant pages below:

Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025 (second edition) - GOV.UK

The ‘Police workforce, England and Wales: 31 March 2025: data tables’ spreadsheet contains the total officer numbers by force area for 2024 and 2025 (to March 2025); and a breakdown by officer function within the ‘F’ series of tables, by Force area (to March 2025).

Data requested to 30 September 2025 will not be disclosed at this time, as it will be published on the GOV.UK website in due course, and by withholding we will rely on the following exemption:

Section 22 - Information Intended for Future Publication

(1) Information is exempt information if -
(a) the information is held by the public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date (whether determined or not)
(b) The information was already held with a view to such publication at the time when the request for information was made, and  
(c) It is reasonable in all the circumstances that the information should be withheld from disclosure until the date referred to in paragraph (a)

Section 22 is a class based qualified exemption which requires us to apply a Public Interest Test to decide if the information you require should be released ahead of the publication strategy. We have set this out below:

Public Interest Test

Factors favouring disclosure:-
To release the information that is held at this particular time would provide the public with an awareness of the most recently collected data serving to enhance public knowledge of the subject, by providing current information that may better inform public debate.

Factors favouring non-disclosure:-
Northumbria Police accept that this is a subject of public interest and accordingly this information is regularly published by GOV.UK. 

Balance Test

For a disclosure of this nature to be appropriate, a valid reason or reasons which identify a tangible benefit to the public for disclosure of information needs to be identified.  In this case a decision has previously been made to fully consider the disclosure of the information at a future date and the information is verified as accurate.  Section 22 allows for circumstances when it is reasonable and correct for public authorities to delay the provision of information until it is made generally available through publication.  The additional resources expended by the force to deal with this part of your request at this time would not be in the public interest.

For the reasons outlined above the balancing test for disclosure at this time is not made out. 

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, you should consider this a refusal notice for this part of your request ie for data to 30 September 2025.