Assaults on NHS and Social workers statistics

Request Number: FOI/16705

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Arrests

Subject: Assaults on NHS and Social workers statistics

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 (PSNI) 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 (ICO) 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
Provide arrest statistics for physical attacks or assaults against NHS health and social care workers in Northern Ireland for each of these three years:

a) 2023
b) 2024
c) 2025

Question 2
Provide details of how many charges were brought against individuals for physical attacks or assaults against NHS health and social care workers in Northern Ireland for each of these years:

a) 2023
b) 2024
c) 2025

Question 3 
Provide details of how many prosecutions were successfully made against individuals for physical attacks or assaults against NHS health and social care workers in Northern Ireland for each of these years:

a) 2023
b) 2024
c) 2025

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.

PSNI can confirm that the information requested, although held electronically on PSNI’s database, is not held in a format that extracts the information without manual examination of all the relevant records.  To establish if an arrest was for an attack/assault on an NHS Health and Social care worker would require each such custody record to be read through to establish who the victim was and whether they were assaulted in the course of their work. This work would need completed in order to identify any subsequent charges. A rough estimate of the number of custody records containing at least one arrest for an offence of physical attack/assault indicates there could be at least 26,000 custody records to examine covering the 3 year period requested. Taking a conservative 10 minutes to examine each record – 10 x 26,000 = 260,000 minutes = 4,333 hours taking this request grossly over the time limits set by 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. Unfortunately due to system limitations and the reasoning set out above, PSNI are unable to offer any refinement in this instance.

Under Section 16 ‘Duty to Assist’
PSNI would suggest that the Public Prosecution Service of Northern Ireland may be able to assist with Question 3, however consideration of relevant Part II exemptions under Freedom of Information Act 2000 may apply.