Incidents at Donard Park, Newcastle

Request Number: FOI/16104

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Antisocial Behaviour

Subject: Incidents at Donard Park, Newcastle

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/

Question 1 
In the past 24 months how many non-emergency incidents have been reported in regards to excessive car noise in Donard Park, Newcastle?

Question 2
Further to question 1, how many visits by officers were made to the Park to investigate?

Question 3
How many fixed penalty fines were issued as a result of visits to Donard Park?

Question 4
PSNI are fully aware of the problem relating to excessive car noise in Donard Park?  I assume, so what ongoing steps are being taken to catch and fine the perpetrators?

Question 5
Finally, if a car revs its engine excessively for no reason, has modified exhaust system to produce loud backfires, and accelerates at great speeds, what laws are being broken and are all officers attending reported incidents fully aware of these?

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.

For Question 1 & 2 - 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. PSNI have utilised Niche search systems for all incidents with Donard Park as the location address for the dates 01/10/2023 – 01/10/2025 which returns 281 occurrences.  In order to review if any of these incidents involved police visiting Donard Park to investigate excessive car noise would take approximately 4 minutes per incident 4 x 281 = 1,124 = 18.73 hours, taking this request over the time limits set by FOIA.

For Question 3 - PSNI further utilised Niche search systems for all incidents with Donard Park as the location address which returns 281 occurrences.  In order to review if any of these incidents involved the issuing of a fixed penalty fine as a result of police visiting Donard Park would take approximately 4 minutes per incident 4 x 281 = 1,124 minutes = 18.73 hours, taking this request 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, on this occasion we are unable to offer refinement.

For Question 4 - Donard Park is Newry, Mourne and Down Council owned property.  Police are working with the council and other partner agencies including the Driver and Vehicle Agency to address the problems relating to excessive car noise.

For Question 5 – The Freedom of Information Act 2000 provides a right of access to recorded information held by public authorities. Section 84 of FOIA relates to recorded information held by a public authority. A public authority is not obliged to create information, give legal advice, speculate or provide rationale which would not be regarded as recorded information, for the purpose of FOI. 

We believe this question is a general question, seeking an interpretation of how legislation is enforced within and outside of the PSNI, rather than a question for recorded information held by PSNI. 

"Information is defined in section 84 of the Act as 'information recorded in any form'. The Act therefore only extends to requests for recorded information. It does not require public authorities (in this case the PSNI) to answer questions generally; only if they already hold the answers in recorded form. The Act does not extend to requests for information about policies or their implementation, or the merits or demerits of any proposal or action - unless, of course, the answer to any such request is already held in recorded form." (Day vs ICO & DWP – EA/2006/0069 Final Decision)