February 06, 2025 | Operational Policing, Investigations and Events , Custody
Request: FOI/00013552
Category: Operational policing, Investigations and Events - Custody
Subject: Private Prosecutions
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(2) 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 (2) 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
I am sending this as a request for information to establish relative to the document attached (Goldsmiths Chambers - private criminal prosecution), if your constabulary either individually or in groups of two or more, or officers individually, have supported and or gained from support for private criminal cases - be that on the prosecution or defence teams.
In that respect, please consider as examples (not limited):
1. 2002-08 aligned to work conducted by Keir Starmer with PSNI, CPS and DUP
2. 2013-14
3. Aligned to Brexit - therefore from 2016 onwards
4. Electoral issues
5. Profiling issues
6. Political parties or interests of other Countries (e.g. Joe Biden/Democrats/Irish Govt but not limited), private businesses such as Warner, CWU, Royal Mail (not limited), Services, individuals and celebrities such as Gallagher Gwyther, Govt Depts and non Govt bodies, Family Courts, Churches and schools
7. Councils
There is good reason to believe Police at most senior level have background interfered into my work, family court, healthcare, finances, credit score, benefits and profiling in abuse of private law - and mucked it up. This allowed case precedent to wide spread economic abuse, human trafficking, undue surveillance, normalisation of fraud on profiles to feed courts, cover up of violence, targeted discrimination and cover up of child grooming and predation.
That being so, please outline any gains - direct or indirect- and relative value. NHS has already disclosed their activity in this arena and scorched by the Priory (who confirmed never knowing me and also subject to NHS fraud).
Clarification Sought
1. Please could you advise what you mean by support for private criminal cases - does this mean support through providing evidence/statements?
2. What type of gain are you referring to in this request?
3. Can you narrow down list you have asked us to consider - is there any specific private criminal cases you are interested in or is it any private criminal cases?
4. Please could you provide a timeframe for the information you seek?
Clarification Received
1. Support = provided of evidence, statements, reports, data
2. Gain = personal gain or for PSNI, which can be monetary or job security etc
3. I mean generally, but also provision of support as defined above for Family Courts, Royal Courts of Justice and any celebrity or political cases. Also any specific to me - maiden name Catney
4. Post 1997, but of particular interest in the period 1998-2000, 2005-09, 2014-15, 2018 - end of 2021.
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(2) 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.
The information is not held centrally and to ascertain what information is held would require a manual trawl of electronic/hard copy records for this time period. PSNI have conducted initial searches within the relevant branches to ascertain whether they hold the information you have requested.
The business area when estimating the time taken, has taken into account the following four items:
• Determining if the information is held;
• Locating the information;
• Retrieving the information and
• Extracting the information to be disclosed from the other information.
Consequently for PSNI to determine if any information is or is not held would be over the cost limits.
Under Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, if a public authority estimates that it would exceed the appropriate limit to confirm whether or not the requested information is held, under Section 12 (2) of the Act, it does not have to deal with the substance of the request.
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 there is no refinement we can provide to bring this request under cost.
It should be further noted that FOI is the request for recorded information and a disclosure of information under FOI is a release to the world in general and not just to the individual requesting the information.
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.