Targeted Roadside Checks

Request Number: FOI-13581

Category: Roads Policing and Safety Cameras - Fixed Penalty Notice

Subject: Targeted Roadside Checks

Request and Answer: 

Request 1
The total number of targeted roadside checks for vehicle licence information carried out by your Police Force in 2022, 2023 and 2024? 

Clarification sought:
Request 1:  The total number of targeted roadside checks for vehicle licence information carried out by your Police Force in 2022, 2023 and 2024?
Can you please clarify what you mean by 'vehicle licence information'? Do you refer to:
a) Vehicle licencing - checks in relation to registration documents – V5s.
b) Vehicle testing - checks in relation to Vehicle Test Certificates – MOTs
c) Incorrect information, Licence being out of date -  is this in relation to drivers licences or Road Fund Licences (Vehicle Tax)?

Clarification received:
My request is not in relation to vehicle checks, but driving licence checks.
a) Vehicle licencing - checks in relation to registration documents – driving licence information on is correct as per their situation
c) Incorrect information, Licence being out of date - is this in relation to drivers licences or Road Fund Licences (Vehicle Tax)?  - Driving licences please.

Request 2

The total number of vehicles issued with fines by the Police off the back of targeted roadside checks for vehicle licencing in 2022, 2023 and 2024? 

Request 3 
The reasons for, and number of fines issued to owners as a result of targeted roadside checks (eg: incorrect information, licence being out of date etc)? 

Request 4
What are the total costs to vehicle drivers for fines issued per year by your Police Force?

Answers
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.

Your request for information has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Act we can confirm that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) does not hold information in relation to your requests. Enquiries made in relation to your request failed to locate any records or documents relevant to your request based on the information you have provided. 

The only checkpoints that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) would do are general road safety ones. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) don’t carry out targeted roadside checks. The Driver Vehicle Agency may do targeted roadside checks and they do deploy their own ANPR cars for checks at the roadside.

In addition, targeted roadside checks, specifically to check drivers licence would not be routine.  Police carry out vehicle check points for a number of reasons and drivers licences are normally checked as a result of this.

Accordingly, we have determined that the Police Service of Northern Ireland does not hold the information to which you seek access.

To obtain the specific information required to answer requests 2 - 4 would involve a manual trawl of all vehicle checkpoint incidents over the last three years, therefore, unfortunately this could not be done within the legislative time frame. There was an average of 200 incidents per day during the 3 year period. This amounts to 219,000 incidents in total over the 3 year period requested. At a very conservative estimate of 30 seconds to manually review each of these 219,000 occurrences this would amount to 1,825 hours work. Therefore based on the rationale outlined above, to answer requests 2 – 4 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 on this occasion we are unable to provide any refinement for your request.
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.