Tuesday 19^th January 2010

Dear Mrs Brown,

FOI Reference No: FOI- 20091/102251

Thank you for your request for information received by West Yorkshire Police on 19^th November 2009.

You requested the following information:

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I would like to request the following information:

Question 1: I would like to know how many sex offenders currently reside in the Wakefield district.

Question 2: Can I please have this broken down by each locality as below?:

Ackworth

Castleford

Crofton

Crigglestone

Darrington

Featherstone

Ferrybridge

Fitzwilliam

Hemsworth

Havercroft and Ryhill

Horbury

Knottingley

Lofthouse

Middlestown and Netherton

Normanton

Ossett

Pontefract

South Elmsall and South Kirkby

Wakefield

Walton

Wrenthorpe

Question 3: How does this compare to 2008?

Question 4: How many of each of these offenders are in each category (High, Medium, Low risk)?

Unfortunately, West Yorkshire Police are unable to provide you with the information requested.

Information pertaining to the number of sex offenders residing in the Wakefield area (questions 1 and 3) is available at the following websites:

For the 2008/09 financial year report:

http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/West%20Yorkshire%20MAPPA%202009%20Report.pdf

For the 2007/08 financial year report:

http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/West%20Yorkshire%20MAPPA%202008%20Report.pdf

As this information is held in the public domain, it is exempt under section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Information relating to the number of sex offenders residing in the specified localities (question 2) and then the number of those offenders in each category (question 4) is exempt under section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act.

Please see Appendix A for the full legislative explanation as to why West Yorkshire Police are unable to provide the information.

Please accept our apologies of the delay in dealing with your request. This is due to the large volume of Freedom of Information requests currently being dealt with by West Yorkshire Police.

COMPLAINT RIGHTS

If you are not satisfied with how this request has been handled or with the information provided, please read the advice notice attached to this letter. If you do wish to take up your right of complaint, please remember to quote the reference number above in any future correspondence.

Yours sincerely

Lauren Ratcliff

Freedom of Information Project Officer

pp Steven Harding

Head of Information Management

The West Yorkshire Police in complying with their statutory duty under sections 1 and 11 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to release the enclosed information will not breach the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. However, the rights of the copyright owner of the enclosed information will continue to be protected by law. Applications for the copyright owner's written permission to reproduce any part of the attached information should be addressed to The Force Solicitor, West Yorkshire Police Headquarters, PO Box 9, Laburnum Road, Wakefield WF1 3QP.

Appendix A

FOI Reference No: FOI- 1/102251

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 creates a statutory right of access to information held by public authorities. A public authority in receipt of a request must, if permitted, state under Section 1(a) of the Act, whether it holds the requested information and, if held, then communicate that information to the applicant under Section 1(b) of the Act.

The right of access to information is not without exception and is subject to a number of exemptions which are designed to enable public authorities to withhold information that is unsuitable for release. Importantly the Act is designed to place information into the public domain, that is, once access to information is granted to one person under the Act, it is then considered public information and must be communicated to any individual should a request be received.

DECISION

Your request for information has been considered and I regret to inform you that West Yorkshire Police cannot comply. This letter serves as a Refusal Notice under Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 17 of the Act provides:

(1) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is to any extent relying on a claim that information is exempt information must, within the time for complying with Section 1(1), give the applicant a notice which:-

(a) states the fact,

(b) specifies the exemption in question, and

(c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

REASONS FOR DECISION

The reason that we are unable to provide you with this information is covered by the following exemption(s):

Section 21 - Information reasonably accessible by other means:

Information pertaining to the number of sex offenders residing in the Wakefield area (questions 1 and 3) is available at the following websites:

For the 2008/09 financial year report:

http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/West%20Yorkshire%20MAPPA%202009%20Report.pdf

For the 2007/08 financial year report:

http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/West%20Yorkshire%20MAPPA%202008%20Report.pdf

For reference, the financial year runs from 1^st April to the 31^st March.

Section 12 - Where cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit:

I can confirm that the information pertaining to the locality and the category for each sex offender is held by West Yorkshire Police, however it is not in an easily retrievable format.

The data you require is held on the Violent & Sex Offenders Register (ViSOR), however to obtain the information relating to the district the offender comes from and then the category which they fall into would require a manual search of all the records held for the Wakefield area. It has therefore been estimated that to conduct this work would take in the region of 54 hours to complete. Therefore the cost of providing you with this information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the `appropriate level' as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which currently stands at £450 or 18 hours worth of work.

ADVICE AND ASSISTANCE

Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act requires that where a public authority exempts a request for the reason that the cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit, the authority should seek to provide advice and assistance to the applicant by suggesting ways in which the request can be refocused in order that it does not exceed the appropriate limit.

In this case, please be advised that even if you were to reduce your request to request just one locality rather than the 21 listed, the response would still be the same. This is because the search would involve the same amount of work to obtain the results. Furthermore, even if the information were able to be extracted from the system, it is highly likely that the information would be exempt under section 31 (law enforcement), section 38 (health & safety) and section 40 (personal data) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Please note that police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.