February 17, 2026 | Legacy and Legal
Request Number: FOI/16780
Category: Legacy and Legal - Incidents and Reports
Subject: Records for Keady RUC station on 8th March 1993
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) and we can neither confirm nor deny that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does or does not hold the information you have requested. 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.
Request
I am researching an attack that took place against the security base at Keady, S. Armagh on the 8th March 1993.
Question 1
Could I please get the reports recorded on that day by RUC at that location?
Question 2
Also details of those RUC that were injured.
Question 3
Also are there any photographic images I could get along with permissions to use them or the procedures I have to carry out to gain permission?
Answer
Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), 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:
- determining whether the information is held;
- locating the information, or a document containing it;
- retrieving the information, or a document containing it; and
- 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.
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.
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 to determine if we hold information in relation to your request would exceed the FOI legislative cost of 18 hours as set by the Secretary of State.
PSNI is not saying it does not hold the data that you request, however, to determine what information we may hold in relation to your request would require a manual trawl of PSNI’s records.
Dip-samples were conducted on held records and it is estimated that it would take a conservative time of 40 hours to determine if we hold any relevant documents and an additional 40 hours to review the documents to extract information, if held. To conduct the necessary searches to provide a response to your request would take approximately 80 hours, based on manual dip-sampling estimates. It would therefore be grossly over the 18 hour cost limit set out under the FOIA, to determine what information we hold in relation to your 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.
We are unable to offer you refinement of this request that would bring it under the appropriate limit. Please note, the information you seek would likely attract exemptions at Part II of the FOIA, if it were not over cost to establish what information is held.