Lotteries

Request Number: FOI/14562

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics - Area Crime Statistics

Subject: Lotteries

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

Request Details
Re Release of Information and Materials Concerning Prosecutions / Convictions and Treatment of Those Found Conducting ‘Lotteries’ (e.g. bingo / selling raffle tickets / ballots etc.)

We require all information, statistics kept and pertinent materials (e.g. tables; graphs; records; reports etc.) concerning:

Request 1
The amount of prosecutions that have been brought under Articles 55 to 57, 59, 132 of the Betting, Gamings, Lotteries and Amusements (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 since your records began (i) at all; and/or (ii) against any individual or organisation who have sold lottery and/or ballot tickets and/or ‘bingo’ tickets (or held such a ‘lottery’);

Request 2
Information and statistics kept where the cases brought before the Court under this legislation (i.e. especially the above named Articles) which have resulted in (i) convictions; (ii) acquittals; (iii) a disposal which fell short of conviction (e.g. a caution; bind over; or an informed warning);

Request 3
Information on whether such statistics are kept by the NI Court Service and/or are accessible;

We are grateful for your assistance to date and would welcome a response, using the numeration set out above, at your very earliest convenience.
Could you please, in the first instance, provide a time-frame for receipt of the relevant information?

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 you seek in Request 1 is held by the PSNI, it is not held in a format that would allow its retrieval without manual intervention. PSNI is not saying it does not hold the data that you request, however to extract the data you have sought in your request would require a manual trawl of PSNI’s records – hence putting the request grossly over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the FOIA.

There are approximately 120 records recorded on our electronic Niche system that are coded as ‘Lotteries’, over the past 15 years alone. It has been estimated that it would take 15 minutes per record to review and retrieve the information from the records that have been coded as ‘Lotteries’. Additionally, the time frame of this request predates our electronic databases which would add additional time for retrieval and review of any relevant paper records. Thus, it would grossly exceed 30 hours to retrieve all of the information sought in this request, surpassing the 18 hour cost limit.

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. 

We may be able to provide a response to Request 1 if the time frame of the request was reduced significantly, as retrieval for 15 years of data alone is over the appropriate limit.

Additionally, for Request 2, the Public Prosecution Service would be able to provide detail on the amount of prosecutions brought which have resulted in convictions / acquittals / disposal short of conviction. For Request 3, we would advise you contact the NI Court Service to establish what they hold.

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.