Duty Restrictions

Request Number: FOI/16193

Category: Organisational Information & Performance - Policies

Subject: Duty Restrictions

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/

Request 1
In relation to FOI / 15981, At the point were the multi disciplinary team have granted restrictions as permanent, can I confirm that permanent means permanent at this point and that no review period is applied to the restrictions granted by the multi disciplinary team.

Request 2 
Has the review of duty adjustments been completed.

Request 3 
Are the PSNI currently carrying out permanent duty adjustment reviews on officers with permanent restrictions. If they are carrying out reviews, what policy or procedure is been used.

Request 4 
Have PSNI consulted with the equality commission NI in relation to providing guidance surrounding the PSNIs current review of permanent duty restrictions

Request 5 
How many officers have had their permanent duty restrictions reviewed from April 2025 until 5/11/25

Request 6 
How many officers have had permanent duty restrictions removed from them since January 2025 to 5 November. Who reviews officers current permanent duty restrictions? How often is this review carried out? How is the review triggered and is the officer aware that a review has been carried out.

Answers 1 - 6 
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.

In relation to Requests 5 and 6 whilst the information is held electronically, it is not retrievable via automated processes. A manual examination of every individual file for the requested period would be required. There are around 683 files that would require examination. Using a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per file this manual examination would take approximately 57 hours bringing this request over cost. 

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.

• Answers to Requests 1, 2 and 3 would be able to be provided within the legislative time frame.

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.

Section 14(2) Repeat Requests
You have submitted a number of requests on this subject. All of the requests were on the same overarching subject and were submitted on the following dates:3rd September 2025,19th September 2025, 22nd September 2025,9th October 2025, and 5th November 2025.

These case numbers are listed under:

• FOI-15661
• FOI-15799
• FOI-15815
• FOI-15981
• FOI-16193

Section 14(2) states: “Where a public authority has previously complied with a request for information which was made by any person, it is not obliged to comply with a subsequent identical or substantially similar request from that person unless a reasonable interval has elapsed between compliance with the previous request and the making of the current request.”

This is a warning that a future request may be dealt with in accordance with Section 14(2) of the Freedom Of Information Act 2000.

However, it is important to note that the application of Section 14 of the FOI Act is not a reflection on any individual but rather the effect of the burden of repeated request/s on PSNI. In this instance, we have reviewed all the evidence and cumulative effect of all the requests received and can confirm we believe they are substantially similar requests.

We have identified a number of indicators that identify a vexatious /repeated request. In brief, these consist of:

• The request was made by the same person as previous requests
• The request is substantially similar to the previous requests