University ISAs

Request Number: FOI/14348

Category: Operational policing, Investigations and Events - Community Impact

Subject: University ISAs

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(2) 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 (2) 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 Details
I am seeking information regarding the sharing of individuals" personal data by universities/university accommodation providers with the police in connection with protest activity, including (but not limited to) verbal or written statements, flyering, picketing, waving of banners, and encampments. Please take a broad interpretation of protest activity, including where an individual could be said to fall under the scope of this request because of what the police or the university has considered to be wider misconduct/criminality related to their activism, such as criminal damage, rather than specifically their involvement in activism.
Please provide the following information:

Request 1
Copies of any and all Information Sharing Agreements between your force and universities or university accommodation providers within your police force area.

Request 2
If retrievable within the cost limit, the number of individuals whose personal data your force has requested and/or received from a UK university or university accommodation provider since 1 October 2023 under the terms of the ISAs disclosed in response to question 1.

Clarification Requested
Can you please clarify does Q2 should refer to all universities within our remit or all UK universities?

Clarification Received
Please interpret Q2 as applying to all universities and university accommodation providers within your remit.

Request 3
If retrievable within the cost limit, please break this down the figures disclosed in response to Q2 by:
a) The name of university or accommodation provider (eg Unite) the data was requested/received from
b) The outcome of the data request, if police made one (eg provided / refused)
c) The reason for sharing data, including, whether it was in connection with any protest activity the data subject was involved in (if so, please specify the type of cause eg Pro-Palestinian, Environmental, Animal Rights)

Request 4
Copies of any and all Community Impact Assessments (CIAs) conducted in relation to the policing of pro-Palestinian protests events in your police force area since 1 October 2023, as well as any overarching CIAs.*

Request 5
Copies of any and all Equality Impact Assessments conducted in relation to the policing of pro-Palestinian protests in your police force area since 1 October 2023, as well as any overarching EIAs.*

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.

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 the information you seek may be held by the PSNI, even to establish if we hold some of 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.

To search for the information sought in Request 2 and 3 would require a manual trawl through electronic systems, Control Works, NICHE and notebooks to ascertain if there was any contact or discussions specifically in respect of ISA’s. This would require each District to run a search for all occurrences involving Universities, University accommodation and providers, manually reviewing each serial and conducting follow up enquiries with Local Policing Team officers to understand if they held any information individually received under ISA.

Additionally, the information sought in Request 4 and 5 are not held centrally and would also require a manual review of electronic systems to establish if any CIAs or EIAs had been conducted in regards to the policing of pro-Palestinian protests since 1 October 2023.

The business area when estimating the time taken, has taken into account the following four items:
• Determining if the information is held;
• Locating the information;
• Retrieving the information and
• Extracting the information to be disclosed from the other information.

Consequently for PSNI to determine if any information is or is not held would be over the cost limits.

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.

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. 

For Request 1, we may be able to provide a response to this request under the appropriate limit, however, the response is likely to attract exemptions.

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.