Tuesday 2^nd February 2010

Dear Ms Gordon,

FOI Reference No: FOI- 20091/106252

Thank you for your request for information received by West Yorkshire Police on 11^th January 2010.

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 Keighley and Ilkley district.

Question 2: Can I please have this broken down by each locality as below and by risk category (High, Medium, Low) for each location?

Keighley

Silsden

Addingham

Ilkley

Burley in Wharfedale

Burley Woodhead

Menston

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

Information pertaining to the number of sex offenders residing in the Keighley and Ilkley area (question 1) is exempt under sections 31 (law enforcement) and 38 (health and safety) of the Freedom of Information Act.

Information relating to the number of sex offenders residing in the specified localities and then the number of those offenders in each category (question 2) 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.

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- 1/106252

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 31 - Law Enforcement (a qualified and prejudice-based exemption):

Section 38 - Health & Safety (a qualified and prejudice-based exemption):

In relation to the above qualified and prejudice-based exemption I am obliged to conduct a harm and public interest test on the information asked for and I have laid out my considerations in order for you to understand why this information has been exempted.

Harm:

Modern day policing is intelligence-led and in this particular subject area the intelligence changes on a day-to-day basis, for example, by stating how many individuals have a requirement to register with the local police under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 (registered sexual offenders) within a small area such as a ward or beat would highlight to the community at large where those individuals are located or not. Such an awareness could lead to the identification or misidentification of an individual and has the potential to provoke unrest within the community resulting in vigilante type behaviour.

This in turn could potentially lead to a Registered Sex Offender going `underground' as happened following a public order incident within the Portsmouth area after a national newspaper printed the details of the offender. Details of this incident are contained within the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1351616/Sex-offender-goes-underground-after-riot.html

The Police Service also has a duty of care to offenders living in the community as well as victims. As explained above, to reveal the location of offender to a level such as ward or beat could resulted in the individual being targeted by the local community which could potentially result in serious injury or death. Furthermore, in some cases, individuals may be targeted even when they have not yet been convicted of an offence, as happened in the Greater Manchester area where a suspected sex offender fell to his death from an apartment block after being attacked by a vigilante gang from the local community. Details of this incident are contained within the below link:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1109108/suspected-sex-offender-fell-death-fled-baying-vigilante-gang.html

As stated above, the duty of care also covers victims of sexual offenders. Whilst the health and safety of the offenders could be compromised if their details were revealed, the victims may also be affected as it may be possible to identify the victim from the suspects details, for example, in cases where the victims are abused by family members. In these situations the victims may not want to revisit events that have caused them great distress. In addition, if a Registered Sex Offender chooses to take evasive action by moving locations and no longer fulfils their requirements to register with the local police, it could lead to further offences being committed by the individual.

Public Interest Considerations:

Section 31 - Law Enforcement:

Factors favouring disclosure of the exempted information are that it would provide a better awareness to the public and enable them to take measures in order to protect themselves. Furthermore, disclosure may lead to the community providing increased intelligence to West Yorkshire Police.

Factors favouring non disclosure of the exempted information are that the responsibility for the monitoring of registered sexual offenders is a multi-agency one, to disclose information which would undermine that partnership approach would seriously compromise effective operational law enforcement. In addition, should registered sexual offenders take evasive action to avoid detection police resources would be diverted from frontline duties and other areas of policing in order to locate and apprehend these individuals. This in turn could place individuals at risk and hinder the prevention and detection of crime.

Section 38 - Health & Safety:

Factors favouring disclosure of the exempted information are that it would lead to a better awareness for the community in relation to this topic area enabling informed public debate to be undertaken.

Factors favouring non disclosure of the exempted information are that by revealing information which would jeopardise the safety of an individual the public would lose confidence in West Yorkshire Police's ability to protect the wellbeing of the community. Also, disclosure could lead to significant harm being caused to an individual by vigilante type behaviour.

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

I can confirm that information pertaining to the locality and the category for each sex offender is held by West Yorkshire Police, however it is not 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 Airedale & Bradford North area. It has therefore been estimated that to conduct this work would take in the region of 34 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 7 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 also be advised that Basic Command Unit (BCU) level statistics are routinely published in the annual Mappa report. The areas you request in question one are covered by the Airedale and Bradford North divisional area, therefore you may wish to visit the below website to obtain the BCU level statistic for the 2008/09 financial year. For reference the financial year runs from the 1^st April to the 31^st March.

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

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.