Emergency Securing Services

Request Number: F-013575

Category: Operational policing, Investigations and Events - Investigations and Operations

Subject: Emergency Securing Services

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:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

We are conducting research on the use of emergency securing services (such as boarding up and securing buildings) for the UK police force. As part of this research, we would like to find out the following information about the police forces practices in this area. Specifically, we are looking to cover the following

Clarification sought:
What does emergency securing services refer to as PSNI is not aware of the term.

Clarification received:
Emergency securing services involve securing premises, usually after powers of entry have been exercised. This mainly includes services like boarding-up.

Scenarios and Usage
Request 1
In what scenarios do you use emergency securing services? Are there standard guidelines or policies governing when these services are used?

Frequency
Request 2
How many cases require emergency securing services annually (ideally from 2010 to 2024)? If possible, please provide a geographical breakdown and include the cause of forced entry (i.e. executing a search warrant, immigration, etc).

Service Providers
Request 3
Who are the main providers or contractors engaged for emergency securing services?
 
Request 4
What proportion of emergency securing services does each contractor achieve?

Expenditure and remuneration
Request 5
How are these services funded – is there a framework in place (if so, please provide detail)? Which parties are responsible for remunerating the emergency securing service contractor (please provide any data that shows a breakdown of this)?

Request 6
If possible, please provide a breakdown of the services used annually by service type (e.g. locksmith, boarding-up, etc) and the incurred cost of each.

Request 7
What has been the annual expenditure on emergency securing services for each year from 2010 to 2024?

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.
One of the Record Owners has advised the following in respect to Requests 1 & 2. To retrieve any data would require a search of the Police computer system. This would then require a visual trawl of each to serial it returned. A search was carried out on the current system which went back to 21/01/2019. Using NIHE or “housing executive” and “secure” or “lock” it returned a total 46,545 results. Even allowing 5 minutes per result equates to 3,878 hours and this is only from January 2019. The Record Owner has advised they have tried to refine this, but it is still vastly 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 and are unable to offer you any refinement.  

We can advise the following in respect to Request 3 & 4
The PSNI use the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. However there is no contract in place.

Request 5, 6 & 7
Your request for information has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Act we can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) does not hold information in relation to your requests. Enquiries made in relation to your request failed to locate any records or documents relevant to your request based on the information you have provided. 

Accordingly, we have determined that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does not hold the information to which you seek access.

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.