PSNI Mental Health Calls and Vehicle Running Costs

Request Number: FOI/15062

Category: Incident and Crime Statistics – Area Crime Statistics

Subject: PSNI Mental Health Calls and Vehicle Running Costs

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 1 
Would it be possible to get statistics for how many calls PSNI have been requested to attend that are of a medical or mental health nature within a 12 month period. This could be due to shortage of ambulance availability or incidents that officers have come across on patrol.
Preferred timeframe would be either 01.06.2024 to 31.05.2025 or 01.01.2024 to 31.12.2024.
If this could be broken down by LPT and or Districts based on the occurrence address would be ideal.

Request 2
If the above request statistics are available, could I have the estimated running costs for the tracking hardware that are fitted to police vehicles? This would be the equipment costs, installation, and maintenance costs per device. The maintenance cost should be either over a 12-month or per month period.

To clarify, this request is in reference to the tracking used to locate police vehicles on Control Works software.

If the first request regarding statistics for medical/mental health related calls is not something that can be provided due to search limitations or other legitimate purposes then this request can be discarded.

Clarification
You have requested that I give a specific date range for my request, if the date range could be from 01.01.2024 to 31.12.2024 then that would be sufficient.

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 some of the information you seek in Request 2 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.

Time is not allocated for the installation of equipment. There are approximately 300 vehicle records that would require manual review to establish installation costs. It would take approximately 10 minutes per vehicle to review each record. External contractors would also be required to retrieve information to allow the PSNI to provide the full cost of installation. Therefore, it is estimated that it would take in excess 50 hours to retrieve the costs for installation alone. 

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. 

While we are unable to provide refinement for Request 2, for Request 1 we can provide the figures for the number of calls for service/reports made that were related to “collapse/illness/injury/trapped” or “mental health” over a 12 month period, broken down by LPT.

Additionally, for your assistance, we do not hold an individual cost for equipment and maintenance per location device. We have an annual support and maintenance agreement with a provider, in which the cost includes infrastructure and equipment with and without location tracking features.

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.