February 17, 2026 | Human Resources
Request Number: FOI/16855
Category: Human Resources - Learning, Development and Training
Subject: "Cake Fines" or staff collections
Request and Answer:
Your request for information below has now been considered. It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the "appropriate costs limit" under Section 12(2) 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 (2) 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/
Request 1
Do you have any written rules or guidance about "cake fines", staff collections, whip-rounds, team social funds, mess funds, or anything similar?
If yes, please provide copies. If you do not have anything that mentions "cake fines" specifically, please provide any written rules you do have about staff collections or team funds generally.
Request 2
Between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025, have you recorded any complaints, conduct cases, grievances, or HR reports about:
- being pressured to bring cakes or food,
- being pressured to pay money into a team fund,
- bullying or coercion linked to "cake fines" or collections? If you keep totals, please provide the number per year.
If you do not keep totals, please just say "not recorded" (no need to do manual searching).
Request 3
Do you have any recorded warnings, learning notes, or internal messages to staff about the risks of "cake fines" or staff collections (for example bullying, unfair pressure, discrimination, misuse of money)?
If yes, please provide copies
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(2) 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:
- determining whether the information is held;
- locating the information, or a document containing it;
- retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
- 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.
Whilst the information you seek in Request 2 may be held by the PSNI, we cannot confirm the information is held without manual intervention. During the period requested, there was 1900 reports of alleged misconduct for officers alone. At an estimate of 1 minute to review each file, to determine if we hold the data you have sought in Request 2 would put your request over the 18 hour cost limit as set out under the FOIA, in regards to officers only. A further manual trawl through civilian staff records of grievance or misconduct cases would have to be carried out. It has been estimated that to review these records would take a further 87 hours.
Additionally, to determine if we have any recorded warnings, learning notes, or internal messages to staff about the risks of "cake fines” or staff collections would require a manual search through records of communications for all staff and officers, in every department. There are over 8,000 police staff and officers and to complete the searches that would be required, to respond to this request, would grossly exceed the 18 hour cost limit.