Detentions under mental health act by ethnicity

The request was refused by Cheshire Constabulary.

Dear Cheshire Constabulary,

I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for data on people detained by the force under the Mental Health Act.

For the 2019-20 and the 2020-21 financial years, please tell me:

1) The number of people detained under the Mental Health Act, broken down by officer-perceived ethnicity

2) The type of vehicle officers used to transport those detained to a place of safety, broken down by officer-perceived ethnicity. Please split these by ambulance, police vehicle, other health vehicle, other, not known, or none (already at a place of safety).

3) The place of safety used for those detained, broken down by officer-perceived ethnicity. Please split these by police station, A&E, private home, health based place of safety, other, and not known.

4) For those people transported using a police vehicle, please specify whether an ambulance was requested, broken down by officer perceived ethnicity.

5) For those people detained and taken to a police station, please specify the reason for the police station being used, broken down by officer perceived ethnicity. For instance in England, officers may take a person to a police station as a place of safety if they are over 18 and their behaviour poses an imminent risk of serious injury or death to that person or others (abbreviated in Home Office data as 'conditions in Regulations were met').

6) For those people detained and taken to a police station, please provide a breakdown of their officer perceived ethnicity and the duration in hours of their stay in the police station.

7) For those people detained and taken to a police station, please provide a count of those who were arrested for committing an offence, broken down by officer perceived ethnicity.

For all ethnicity breakdowns, please use Home Office/ONS categorisations. These consist of 'White', 'Black', 'Asian', 'Mixed', and 'Other'. Please include Chinese persons in the category of Other.

Yours faithfully,

Harriet Clugston

(Please note I am using a WhatDoTheyKnowAccount set up by my colleague Claire Wilde but my name is Harriet Clugston)

Freedom of Information, Cheshire Constabulary

Dear Sir/Madam

I acknowledge receipt of your correspondence received 30/06/2021 which is
being dealt with as a request for information in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act 2000.
I am in the process of dealing with your request and will respond in due
course and in any case by 27/07/2021.

Please note that you will not receive a response if you have previously
been issued with a notice under section 14 of the act relating to the
subject of this request.

Please contact us by email at [1][email address] if you have any further
enquiries.

Regards

The Requests Team
Information Compliance
Cheshire Constabulary HQ
Clemonds Hey
Oakmere Road
Winsford
Cheshire
CW7 2UA

Tel :: 01606 362384

This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. Please notify
the sender if received in error. Internet email is not to be treated as a
secure means of communication. The Constabulary monitors all Internet and
email activity and requires it is used for official communications only.
Thank you for your co-operation.

References

Visible links
1. mailto:[email%20address]

Requests, Cheshire Constabulary

2 Attachments

Dear H Clugston,

Please see attached a response to your request made under the Freedom of
Information Act.

Regards,

Lucy Taylor – Request Decision Maker

Cheshire Constabulary and Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service Joint Corporate
Services

Clemonds Hey | Oakmere Road | Winsford | Cheshire | CW7 2UA

Visit [1]www.cheshire.police.uk | [2]www.cheshirefire.gov.uk

Follow [3]@cheshirepolice and @CheshireFire on Twitter

Like [4]Cheshire Police and Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service on Facebook

This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. Please notify
the sender if received in error. Internet email is not to be treated as a
secure means of communication. The Constabulary monitors all Internet and
email activity and requires it is used for official communications only.
Thank you for your co-operation.

References

Visible links
1. http://www.cheshire.police.uk/
2. http://www.cheshirefire.gov.uk/
3. http://www.twitter.com/cheshirepolice
4. http://www.facebook.com/cheshirepolice

Dear Cheshire Constabulary,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Cheshire Constabulary's handling of my FOI request 'Detentions under mental health act by ethnicity'.

In your response you state to obtain all the detail requested would involve manually reviewing each record.

However, this strikes me as unusual since all of the information requested is to some extent already provided to the Home Office by Cheshire Constabulary, except for the ethnicity breakdown. Type of vehicle, place of safety, whether an ambulance was called - these are all fields in the Home Office database to which Cheshire Police submits data. The ethnicity of those detained is also recorded and provided to the Home Office, but is not cross referenced with the other variables. But this suggests that Cheshire Police does have a way of electronically recording specific data on such detentions without a manual review.

Please see the HO collection entitled 'Police powers and procedures England and Wales statistics', file name 'Detentions under the Mental Health Act (1983): police powers and procedures': https://www [dot] gov.uk/government/statistics/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2020

Could you therefore please clarify what part of the data it is that you are unable to provide?

Yours faithfully,
Harriet

Freedom of Information, Cheshire Constabulary

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email dated in which you express dissatisfaction
with our response to your request under the Freedom of Information Act
2000.

In view of your comments your request has been forwarded to our
independent appeals/reviewing officer, who has been appointed by the
Authority. In accordance with our current policy, in line with
the guidance from the Information Commissioner we aim to provide
a response to you within 20 working days.

If you require any further information you may contact me, details below.

Regards

Freedom of Information Officer
Information Compliance
Cheshire Constabulary HQ
Clemonds Hey
Oakmere Road
Winsford
Cheshire
CW7 2UA

Tel :: 01606 366556

This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. Please notify
the sender if received in error. Internet email is not to be treated as a
secure means of communication. The Constabulary monitors all Internet and
email activity and requires it is used for official communications only.
Thank you for your co-operation.

Requests, Cheshire Constabulary

2 Attachments

Dear H. Clugston

I am writing in response to your email requesting an independent appeal
against the decision made in relation to your request for information
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.   Please be advised that in
this instance Cheshire Constabulary is not obliged to undertake an
internal review as internal review requests should be made within 40
working days of the initial response, however on this occasion to assist
we have completed one.

Your original request

I am writing to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act for
data on people detained by the force under the Mental Health Act.

For the 2019-20 and the 2020-21 financial years, please tell me:

1) The number of people detained under the Mental Health Act, broken down
by officer-perceived ethnicity

2) The type of vehicle officers used to transport those detained to a
place of safety, broken down by officer-perceived ethnicity. Please split
these by ambulance, police vehicle, other health vehicle, other, not
known, or none (already at a place of safety).

3) The place of safety used for those detained, broken down by
officer-perceived ethnicity. Please split these by police station, A&E,
private home, health based place of safety, other, and not known.

4) For those people transported using a police vehicle, please specify
whether an ambulance was requested, broken down by officer perceived
ethnicity.

5) For those people detained and taken to a police station, please specify
the reason for the police station being used, broken down by officer
perceived ethnicity. For instance in England, officers may take a person
to a police station as a place of safety if they are over 18 and their
behaviour poses an imminent risk of serious injury or death to that person
or others (abbreviated in Home Office data as 'conditions in Regulations
were met').

6) For those people  detained and taken to a police station, please
provide a breakdown of their officer perceived ethnicity and the duration
in hours of their stay in the police station.

7) For those people detained and taken to a police station, please provide
a count of those who were arrested for committing an offence, broken down
by officer perceived ethnicity.

For all ethnicity breakdowns, please use Home Office/ONS categorisations.
These consist of 'White', 'Black', 'Asian', 'Mixed',  and 'Other'. Please
include Chinese persons in the category of Other.

The Constabulary’s original response

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) places two duties
on public authorities.  Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at
s1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information

specified in a request is held. The second duty at s1(1)(b) is to disclose
information that has been  confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are
relied upon Section 17 of the FOIA requires that we

provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact; b)
specifies the exemptions in question  and c) state (if that would not
otherwise be apparent) why the exemption(s) applies.

From our preliminary assessment we are unable to provide this as it would
exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of the Freedom of
Information Act 2000. This is currently £450. The basis

for this calculation is the cost of retrieving the data to answer your
questions

To obtain the relevant information relating to the above request we would
need to complete a manual trawl of custody records. This is because the
level of detail you have requested cannot be extracted using business
reporting tools. There would be approximately 450 records that would need
to be reviewed to provide the level of detail required. This is estimated
to take 10 minutes per record equating to 75 hours work. Your entire
request is therefore refused.

The appropriate limit is defined in the Data Protection and Freedom of
Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004, which is
covered by statutory Instrument Number 3244 of 2004.  Furthermore, Section
12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 allows a public authority to
refuse to respond to a request for information where the cost of
compliance would exceed the appropriate limit

as defined by the above mentioned regulations.

However in order to assist you if you were to resubmit limited to Q1 we
may be able to provide a response within the limitations of the Act.

If you are not satisfied with the decision applied in this case I enclose
for your attention a copy of the Constabulary's appeal procedures.

Regards,

Your request for an internal review/appeal

I am writing to request an internal review of Cheshire Constabulary's
handling of my FOI request 'Detentions under mental health act by
ethnicity'.

In your response you state to obtain all the detail requested would
involve manually reviewing each record.

However, this strikes me as unusual since all of the information requested
is to some extent already provided to the Home Office by Cheshire
Constabulary, except for the ethnicity breakdown. Type of vehicle, place
of safety, whether an ambulance was called - these are all fields in the
Home Office database to which Cheshire Police submits data. The ethnicity
of those detained is also recorded and provided to the Home Office, but is
not cross referenced with the other variables. But this suggests that
Cheshire Police does have a way of electronically recording specific data
on such detentions without a manual review.

Please see the HO collection entitled 'Police powers and procedures
England and Wales statistics', file name 'Detentions under the Mental
Health Act (1983): police powers and procedures': [1]https://www [dot]
gov.uk/government/statistics/police-powers-and-procedures-england-and-wales-year-ending-31-march-2020

Could you therefore please clarify what part of the data it is that you
are unable to provide?

The Constabulary’s response to your appeal

The appeal process is to review the original request and the process
undertaken to achieve the disclosure. I can confirm that I have reviewed
your original request and the initial response sent to you and your
internal review has not been upheld. I am satisfied that the exemption was
applied correctly as to attempt to retrieve all relevant data relating to
your request would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12 of
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  

To explain, I have conducted further enquiries with the relevant
department and have established that some data is recorded using
spreadsheets, however this data is not recorded in a standardised format
by each area and therefore some data is incomplete.   For example, arrest
data is not recorded on the spreadsheets, furthermore the ‘Place of
Safety’ is recorded by the Western/Eastern areas but not by Northern, as
is ‘Duration’.   As this data is not recorded consistently on the
spreadsheets to obtain this data would require a manual review and cross
reference of our crime/incident recording system to establish if this data
is held.

For the period requested there are in excess of 400 records relating to
this subject, to cross reference the spreadsheet data and manually review
each incident on our crime/incident recording system would take one member
of staff approximately 10 minutes per record equating to at least 66 hours
work.

However to assist we can provide some data relating to ethnicity, place of
safety, vehicle used to transport to place of safety and reason for police
vehicle being used.   Additionally although the reason for detention is
not recorded consistently and as explained we would need to manually
review each record to verify this, to assist we can advise that some
examples of this would include : ‘advised by custody nurse,  ‘requested by
custody’.

Please see the attached spreadsheet:

Data caveat:   as advised above, the data recorded varies between
Eastern/Western and Northern and as such there are gaps in the data.

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, you have further recourse for
appeal, if required, to the Information Commissioner. Information can be
obtained about the appeal procedure from:

The Information Commissioner

Information Commissioner’s Office

Wycliffe House

Water Lane

Wilmslow

Cheshire

SK8 5AF

If you have any further queries or wish to submit any further requests
then please contact the Requests team.

Regards

Sandra Graham - Requests Compliance Officer

Cheshire Constabulary and Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service Joint Corporate
Services

Clemonds Hey | Oakmere Road | Winsford | Cheshire | CW7 2UA

Phone: 01606 362384 | Email: [2][email address]

Visit [3]www.cheshire.police.uk | [4]www.cheshirefire.gov.uk

Follow [5]@cheshirepolice and @CheshireFire on Twitter

Like [6]Cheshire Police and Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service on Facebook

This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. Please notify
the sender if received in error. Internet email is not to be treated as a
secure means of communication. The Constabulary monitors all Internet and
email activity and requires it is used for official communications only.
Thank you for your co-operation.

References

Visible links
1. https://www/
2. mailto:[email%20address]
3. http://www.cheshire.police.uk/
4. http://www.cheshirefire.gov.uk/
5. http://www.twitter.com/cheshirepolice
6. http://www.facebook.com/cheshirepolice