PSNI Documents

Request Number: FOI/15929

Category: Organisational Information Performance - Procedures

Subject: PSNI Documents

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/

Request
I am looking for the police training syllabus from the 1970s-1980s. Generally, I am trying to find how police officers, from constable to CID officers were instructed to record crime scenes.

For example, was there a template that instructed police officers to note down the time of arrival at the scene, to state an approximate number of people at the scene and immediate vicinity, to collect and record names of everybody at the scene, or list the names only of people they spoke?

The PONI mentioned an OEL – Operational Enquiry Log – was there a template that can be made available to us?

There are a few other guidance documents I am looking for, if it would be possible to get a phone call as it may be easier to explain over the phone,that would be great.

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.

From the early 1960’s up to the 2000’s, PSNI hold tens of thousands of physical records. We don’t have an exact figure of how many records we hold as these figures aren’t held anywhere and would require a manual count. The count of tens of thousands is an estimate based off the number of boxes/ lever arches we have containing records in the relevant business area. The length of time it takes to review a record would depend on how many pages are included as well as the expertise level of the individual reading. For example for someone with no knowledge of the subject area, it would take them longer to determine the relevancy of the documents than someone who is familiar with the topic area. Additionally, having a reference number for the required document would speed the process up slightly too as it narrows the search field and means an individual would be following chronological numbers to the correct document as opposed to needing to physically read every record to determine what it’s about and if it’s relevant. The relevant PSNI business area has estimated that three records could take approximately 15 minutes to an hour to read. Therefore to locate the relevant information required to answer your request in full would be significantly over cost.

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 due to how the information is stored we are unable to provide any refinement to your request on this occasion.