April 30, 2025 | Incident and Crime Statistics , Crime Statistics
Request Number: FOI/14346
Category: Crime/Incident Statistics – Other and Multiple Crime/Incident types
Subject: Social Media Posts
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(2) 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 (2) of the FOIA. This guidance is available on the ICO website at the following link:
Request 1
Please advise for the past three years; How many complaints have been lodged with PSNI about social media posts? a) Please specify nature of each complaint
Request 2
How each was resolved - how many suspects were:
a) spoken to
b) cautioned
c) arrested
d) any other informal resolution - please clarify which
e) recorded as Non Crime Hate Incident
f) file passed to PPS
g) resulted in prosecution - please specify charges
h) resulted in conviction - please clarify crime convicted of
Request 3
Please specify the chain of actions for each individual complaint from questions 1&2 using spreadsheet.
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:
A: not all complaints about things will result in the identification of a crime or a domestic / hate / anti-social behaviour incident.
B: there is no specific field on Niche that would indicate that an occurrence was related to a social media report.
Consequently this would essentially be a key word search which would require the manual examination of each record. Your request seeks information for the last three years. PSNI crime reporting is based on financial years, making the last 3 years financial years 2022/2023 to 2024/2025. During this time period there have been thousands of records created thus to identify the number of these that were specifically regarding a social media post would take PSNI over 18 hours to determine what information we even hold, thus putting this request 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, but we are unable to provide a refinement.
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.