Locate Panel Penalty Points

Request Number: FOI/15703

Category: Roads Policing and Safety Cameras - Fixed Penalty Notice

Subject: Locate Panel Penalty Points

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
Can you tell me how many people have been given locate panel points on their driving cards since their inception please?

Question 2
How many were adv drivers?

Question 3
How many were for doing 81mph?

Question 4
How many were given after not being able to give a reason and simply apologised?

Clarification requested:
For request 3, could you advise if you are seeking data for drivers doing 81mph only or 81mph and above?

Clarification received:
81mph only

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.

Whilst the information is held, it is not held centrally.

Various records have been reviewed within Operational Support Department (OSD) and this has led to the conclusion that establishing a clear and comprehensive picture of all Locate Points would be over cost. The completeness and accuracy of the data that is available cannot be confirmed without an extensive search of all relevant information, held across several electronic systems, the relevant email inbox, and both electronic and hard copy records maintained separately by different sections of the department. Estimating the number of hours required to retrieve the information and review its relevance to the request is a complex task and one that would first necessitate identifying and accessing all sources of data. This preliminary stage alone would exceed the FOI legislative cost of 18 hours, particularly due to the date range requested i.e. 'since their inception'. Even if the information were held centrally, the request would be complicated further by the need to then establish the speed involved, the officer's department, advanced driver status, reason provided by the officer and the panel's rationale for the allocation of points.

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. 
Questions 1 and 3 - We can provide responses to these questions within cost, however the data be incomplete. It may be more feasible to provide data from 2019 onwards.
Questions 2 and 4 - Unfortunately, due to the way in which the data is stored, we are unable to provide refinement for this request.
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.