Arlene Arkinson Investigation

Request Number: FOI/15773

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Serious and Organised Crime

Subject: Arlene Arkinson Investigation

Request and Answer: 
Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) We can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does hold the information you have requested however it is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and this will be further explained below. PSNI have followed the Information Commissioner’s Office guidance ‘Requests where the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit’ in relation to this request, which also provides further detail on the application of Section 12 (1) of the FOIA. This guidance is available on the ICO website at the following link:
ico.org.uk/for-organisations/foi/guide-to-managing-an-foi-request/charging-a-fee-and-cost-limits/

Question 1
Confirmation of whether the Police Service of Northern Ireland holds investigation files relating to the disappearance and murder of Arlene Arkinson (1994, Castlederg, County Tyrone).

Question 2
The date ranges of those records.

Question 3
Any publicly releasable information about the scope of the investigation, such as the size of the investigation team, duration of active enquiries, or major review dates.

Answer
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when refusing to provide such information (because the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit) to provide you the applicant with a notice which states that fact.

It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Section 12 of FOIA allows a public authority to refuse to deal with a request where it estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held. The estimate must be reasonable in the circumstances of the case. The ‘appropriate limit’ is currently £600 for central government and £450 for all other public authorities including PSNI. The relevant Regulations which define the appropriate limit for section 12 purposes are The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulation 2004 SI 2004 No 3244. These are known as the ‘Fees Regulations’ for brevity.

Regulation 4(3) of the Fees Regulations states that a public authority can take into account the costs it reasonably expects to incur in carrying out the following permitted activities in complying with the request:

(i) determining whether the information is held;
(ii) locating the information, or a document containing it;
(iii) retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
(iv) extracting the information from a document containing it.

Under those regulations PSNI can calculate the time spent on each of these permitted activities at £25 per hour (thus if the activity(s) takes more than 18 hours PSNI will be in excess of the ‘appropriate limit’).

When a public authority is estimating whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if the conditions laid out in Regulation 5 of the Fees Regulations can be satisfied. Those conditions require the requests to be: 

• made by one person, or by different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign;  
• made for the same or similar information; and 
• received by the public authority within any period of 60 consecutive working days. 

Regulation 5(2) of the Fees Regulations requires that the requests which are to be aggregated relate “to any extent” to the same or similar information. This is quite a wide test but public authorities should still ensure that the requests meet this requirement.

Enquiries made in relation to your request has identified that retrieval of information to respond to your request would exceed the FOI legislative cost of 18 hours as set by the Secretary of State.

Questions 2 & 3 bring this request overcost. 

Whilst the information you seek is held by PSNI, this is a file which predates the Holmes system. The Holmes account shows 6,360 records on the account. This includes hard copy videos and tapes which are not electronically available to view and would need manually played in the correct equipment once retrieved.  Travel to review this information is a round trip of 102 miles = 3 hours 14 minutes.  Removal of records from storage = 1 hour. Further review of officers reports to identify information that can publically be released under the headings requested.  There are 485 officer reports on the account, a dip sample of three reports at random indicate an average of 1 minute and 10 seconds to review each report, from which can be extrapolated a total time for review of all officer reports of 9.43 hours. 

Aside from officer reports, which could reasonably be expected to yield information, there are 1,247 statements and 3,252 “other documents” which may have bearing on the scope of the investigation, number of personnel involved, and the duration of active enquiries.  A separate, further dip sample has been carried out within the “other documents” category, the results of which are as follows:

Average time = 266 seconds/4.43 minutes per document.  4.43 minutes multiplied by 3,252 = 240.58 hours of reviewing documents to properly answer this request.  Total time = 3.14 hours + 9.43 hours + 240.58 hours = 253.157 hours.  Your request is grossly over the cost limits set out in FOIA.

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter should be considered as a Refusal Notice, and the request has therefore been closed. 

Advice and assistance
You may wish to submit a refined request in order that the cost of complying with your request may be facilitated within the ‘appropriate limit’. In compliance with Section 16 of the Act, we have considered how your request may be refined to bring it under the appropriate limit, however we can offer no refinement.