Disclosure Team
Ministry of Justice
102 Petty France
London
SW1H 9AJ
James Pugh
xxxx.xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.xxx
21 November 2017
Dear Mr Pugh
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) Request – 171115013
Thank you for your request dated 15 November 2017 in which you asked for the following
information from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ):
Can I get a list of all the items classed as contraband which was seized from
prisoners at HMP Stoke Heath in Shropshire in the last five years? Could the
information be broken down into contraband item description and how many of the
items were seized for each year (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). Can you also tell me
the number of assaults there have been on prisoners and prison staff at HMP Stoke
Heath in Shropshire in the last five years? Could the information be broken down into
how many assaults there have been on prisoners in each year and the number of
assaults there have been on prison staff in each year?
Your request has been handled under the FOIA.
I can confirm the MoJ holds all of the information you have requested. However, to provide
as the request currently stands would exceed the cost limit set out in the FOIA.
Section 12(1) of the FOIA means public authorities are not obliged to comply with a request
for information if it estimates the cost of complying would exceed the appropriate limit
. The
appropriate limit for central government is set at £600. This represents the estimated cost of
one person spending 3.5 working days determining whether the department holds the
information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the information.
Where section 12 applies to one part of a request we refuse all of the request under the cost
limit as advised by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
We believe that the cost of reading through all the incident reports to determine if records
held something within your request this would exceed the appropriate limit. Consequently,
we are not obliged to comply with your request.
Although we cannot answer your request at the moment, we may be able to answer a
refined request within the cost limit. You may wish to consider, for example, to ask for
incidents of items found by type since 2015 when our reporting systems were improved. Or
ask for incidents of drug and mobile phone finds since February 2013 when our reporting
systems were improved. Please be aware that we cannot guarantee at this stage that a
refined request will fall within the FOIA cost limit, or that other exemptions will not apply.
I can confirm that the MoJ holds the information that you have requested regarding assaults.
However, the information is exempt from disclosure under section 21 of the FOIA, because it
is reasonably accessible to you. The information can be found in the Safety in Custody
bulletin at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/ministry-of-justice/series/safety-in-
custody-statistics.
For guidance on how to structure successful requests please refer to the ICO website on the
following li
nk: http://ico.org.uk/for_the_public/official_information
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244/pdfs/uksi_20043244_en.pdf
Appeal Rights
If you are not satisfied with this response you have the right to request an internal review by
responding in writing to one of the addresses below within two months of the date of this
response.
xxxx.xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xxx.xx
Data Access and Compliance Unit, Ministry of Justice, 10.38, 102 Petty France, London,
SW1H 9AJ
You do have the right to ask the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to investigate any
aspect of your complaint. However, please note that the ICO is likely to expect internal
complaints procedures to have been exhausted before beginning their investigation.
Yours sincerely
Operational Security Group
HM Prisons and Probation Service
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