Tuesday 5th May 2009

Dear Mr Charlesworth,

FOI Reference No: FOI-20092/81094

I write in connection with your request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 which was received by us on 7^th April 2009. Your request was as follows:

Freedom of Information request - How Many Front line Civilian Staff Members and serving Police Officers Have Convictions in the year 2008?

Clarification received

Secondly, I request data for 2008 on how many serving Police Officers assigned/working for West Yorkshire Police, plus any other frontline staff such as the 0845 call centre and such as the 'miserable' staff on the front desk of Wood Street, plus any other frontline staff.

TAKEN TO MEAN

...how many serving officers/civilian staff that worked for WYP in 2008 HAD convictions as opposed to serving members of staff who GOT convictions in 2008.

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.

REASONS FOR DECISION

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.

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

Section 12 - Where cost of compliance exceeds the appropriate limit

Cautions and convictions must be declared at the time of applying to become a police officer with West Yorkshire Police. In addition, West Yorkshire Police requires serving police officers and members of police staff to notify the force if they have been cautioned, convicted or received a penalty notice for any offence. Information is also obtained from other police forces under the `Notifiable Occupations' legislation.

Disciplinary action is considered in each case where notification or information is received and each case is treated on its merits. The information and subsequent action is recorded on the personnel file of the individual. It is not recorded or held on a central database.

Therefore, I can confirm that we do hold this information but unfortunately it is not held in an easily retrievable format nor is there an automated mechanism that would allow us to easily collate the required data.

As explained, the relevant information would be held on the personnel file of the individual concerned. To obtain the information you seek would entail a manual check of each personnel record held for West Yorkshire Police Officers and West Yorkshire Police front line support staff. As of 31^st March 2009, West Yorkshire Police employed 4379 police officers and over four thousand police staff. Further time would be required to narrow down which support staff actually occupy `front line' roles. To conduct the manual search of the police officer files alone at an estimate of 10 minutes per file would take over 700 hours. It has been estimated, therefore, that the cost of providing you with this information is far above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds 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.

Our ACPO guidance states that we do not issue fees notices and therefore in accordance with the

Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Section 16 - Advice and Assistance

As part of our duty to provide advice and assistance under section 16 of the Act, West Yorkshire Police has an obligation, where a request has been turned down on the basis of an exemption, to assist the applicant in formulating a request that would be less likely to attract an exemption. The following information may enable you to revise your question to one which is less likely to attract a section 12 refusal. Occupations provided by an arrested person are recorded on our crime recording system. Therefore, data in relation to arrests of individuals who have stated that they are employed as a police officer or police support staff can be searched electronically. The result of such searches could narrow down the number of records which would need to be manually accessed to a level that is below the appropriate fees level. It may also be helpful to consider that a request covering a shorter time period would entail less retrieval and extraction time e.g. police officers arrested over a one year period.

Police forces providing information do not use generic systems, nor are the procedures used for capturing the data the same. It should be noted that for these reasons this forces response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other response you may receive.

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

Claire Vickers-Pearson

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.