Sergeants Promotion

Request Number: FOI/15365

Category: Organisational Information – Police/Staff Recruitment and Promotion

Subject: Sergeants Promotion

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 (PSNI) 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. We have explained to you below that when PSNI estimates whether the appropriate limit is likely to be exceeded, it can include the costs of complying with two or more requests if certain conditions are met. In this case those conditions are met and complying with all of your requests would in our estimation exceed that appropriate limit set out in Regulation. We have explained this further below but also we 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:
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Request 1
The Sergeants promotion process has now finished. There were 4 competency based questions, with both forward and backwards elements. How large was the question pool for each competency? To be broken down for each competency and then subcategories for forwards and backwards based questions.

Request 2
There were a number of boards held, at various locations for up to a week. How many combinations of board panel members were there? E.G - three panels members that sat on the same panel for a period of a week and seen 20 applicants would be deemed to be one, unless one of the panel members was unavailable for a day and a new individual was briefly substituted, this would then become two.

Request 3
Out of these board panels, which board panel had the highest and lowest percentage of persons pass? Please give percentages. I am asking for location and date rather than names of panel members

Request 4 
Out of these board panels, which board panel had the highest and lowest average scores? Please give these averages. I am asking for location and date rather than names of panel members

Request 5
How was it selected what questions were given to which individuals? Was this random on a local level or pre-selected by HR?

Request 6
As per question one, for each competency, both forward and backward. Its widely acknowledged that not all questions will attain the same average score. What was the average score of the highest and lowest scoring questions for each competency, both forward and backward?

Request 7
As per question 6, with acknowledgement that different questions will attain different score averages. How many combinations of questions were issued to participants? 50 participants sitting the exact same 4 questions would be deemed to be one combination. A 51st applicant being given 3 of the 4 same questions, and another 4th random would be deemed to be a second combination.

Request 8
Of these question combinations, what was the average score of the highest and lowest scoring combinations?

Request 9
Of these question combinations, what was the percentage pass rate of the highest and lowest scoring combinations?

Request 10
What action was taken to mitigate individuals receiving a combination of questions which had the lowest average pass rate amongst all categories?

Request 11
Likewise, what action was taken to mitigate individuals receiving a combination of questions which had the highest average pass rate amongst all categories?

Request 12
Out of all the persons that failed to attain the standard required, how many of these were due to an overall score lower than 11 and how many were due to a score of 1 on a particular question? If a number of individuals failed on more than one element, please note this separately.

Request 13
What was the most frequent competency to attain a question mark of 1 on? How many people obtained this?

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.

PSNI can advise that the majority of information required to provide a response to this FOI is not held on a single spreadsheet and as such not easily retrievable. To ascertain any details regarding panels including make- up and pass rates would involve each candidate file to be viewed to record who sat on their panel. Relevant data from these files would need to be collated and worked through to enable us to answer questions regarding panels and scoring of questions. There are 713 files and a conservative estimate of 20 minutes per file simply to extract relevant information and create a spreadsheet to work from work take approximately 237 hours thus putting this request over cost. This figure would further be added to when we are creating answers relevant to the particular questions.

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.

• Subject to a new request PSNI can provide a response to Requests - 1, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 13 with a bit more explanation as to what is being asked in second part of  Request 12.

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.