Complaints against PSNI Officers to Police Ombudsman

Request Number: FOI/16739

Category: Discipline and Misconduct - Misconduct

Subject: Complaints against PSNI Officers to Police Ombudsman

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/

Request 1
All information held by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland regarding complaints against PSNI officers related to:
a) sectarian behaviour,
b) hate crimes,
c) sectarianism
d) racism.

Request 2
Please provide number of complaints received:
a) nature of the claims,
b) number substantiated,
c) number referred to PPS,
d) number of officers charged,
e) number convicted, nature of offences/complaints (without identifying individuals),
f)  number where PPS declined to prosecute, and
g) number resulting in disciplinary recommendations.

This request covers January 2024 to present.

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 advise that, although there are a relatively small number of allegations categorised within the allegations of 'Discriminatory Behaviour', it is possible that these complaints could also be contained within other allegations. Therefore to answer this request, we would need to conduct a manual trawl through all complaints for the period requested. For the period in question, a total of 5871 complaints have been made against the PSNI. To examine even half of these, at a conservative estimate of 1 minute per complaint, would take approximately 49 hours - vastly exceeding the legislative timeframe of 18 hours. For those relevant complaints which were identified, additional work would be required to establish if the information requested in Request 2 was held.

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. For refinement of this request PSNI can advise that, for the requested period, we can provide the number of allegations specifically within the following allegation sub-categories within cost:

Disability Discriminatory Behaviour
Gender Discriminatory Behaviour (including sexist remarks)
Homophobic Discriminatory Behaviour
Racially Discriminatory Behaviour
Sectarian Discriminatory Behaviour
Trans-phobic Discriminatory Behaviour
Other Religious Discriminatory Behaviour
Other Discriminatory Behaviour

Submission of a refined request would be treated as a new request, and considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, including consideration of relevant Part II exemptions.