Most Lucrative Speed Camera in Your Forces Area - Calendar Year 2024

Request Number: FOI/15502

Category: Roads Policing and Safety Cameras - Traffic Offences

Subject: Most Lucrative Speed Camera in Your Forces Area - Calendar Year 2024

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/

For the calendar year 1 January to 31 December 2024 in the area that falls under your jurisdiction can you please:

Request 1
Identify the single speed camera site that generated the highest volume of enforcement in 2024.

Request 2
Provide its unique identifier, precise location (road name, nearest junction, speed limit) and camera type (fixed, average speed, red-light-speed).

Request 3
State the number of detected offences recorded by that camera in 2024.

Request 4
If held, provide the total value of fixed penalties paid that are attributable to that camera in 2024, and the number of points endorsed.

If you do not hold revenue figures, please confirm this and, under your section 16 duty to advise and assist, indicate which public body holds them and any camera reference needed for an onward request.

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 Business Areas has advised, in order to provide number of points endorsed, we would have to go into each individual offence, and into Niche court results for prosecutions files. This would be over cost as at a conservative estimate of 2 minutes per case, just for the Conditional offers, 752 files by 2 minutes per file would be around 25 hours and this doesn’t include prosecution cases. 

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 we can answer the following 

• Request 1
• Request 2
• Request 3

We do not hold revenue by individual site. Each site would have a different van, with different operators on different days so therefore we would be unable to provide information based on a camera.

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.