Good afternoon,

Please be advised that Section 8(1)(b) of FOI legislation indicates that the real name of an applicant should be used when requesting information and not any other name, for example, a pseudonym.

Title and/or first name, or first name initials, with surname satisfies the requirement for provision of a real name and you have provided an initial and second name, but in order to validate this and proceed with your request we will require proof of this name please.

Should you wish to proceed with this request please provide formal proof of your name, scanned and e-mailed, to the FOI Unit. This is for validation purposes only, in order that we can ascertain that your request is valid under Section 8(1)(b) of FOIA.

After receiving your reply, your request will then be considered and you will receive the information requested within the statutory timescale of 20 working days as defined by the Freedom of Information Act 2000, subject to the information not being exempt or containing a reference to a third party.

However, if the requested identification has not been received within 20 working days I will assume you no longer wish to proceed with this request and will treat it as withdrawn.

Please also be advised that Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information legislation states that an authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if it is estimated that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit 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.

Please note that a public authority can aggregate requests for information in the following circumstances:

· two or more requests for information have been made to the same public authority
· the requests relate to the same or similar information
· they have been received by the public authority within a space of 60 consecutive working days
· they are either from the same person, or from 'different persons who appear to the public authority to be acting in concert or in pursuance of a campaign' . Should it be found that individuals are acting in concert their requests will be aggregated

Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter please contact the FOI unit quoting the reference number above.

Yours sincerely

Susan Goddard| Freedom of Information Officer
Corporate Communications | West Midlands Police
T: 101 (ext. 801 2068)
Preventing crime, protecting the public and helping those in need.
If it’s not 999, search WMP Online

show quoted sections