Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

Thank you for your email received today in which you make a request for
information that Northumbria Police may hold in accordance with the
Freedom Of Information Act 2000

We are in the process of dealing with your request and a response should
be provided to you by 10/10/2018 which is in accordance with the
legislation.

Yours sincerely

Information Management Unit

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Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom
of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

Thank you for your e mail dated 12 September 2018 in which you made a
request for access to certain information which may be held by Northumbria
Police.

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of
access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority
(including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

I wish to know the total number of children under the age of 18 who have
been arrested for drugs-related offences in the past eight years, divided
by financial year (2010-2011, 2011-2012, 2012-2013, 2013-14, 2014-15,
2015-16, 2016-2017, 2017-18)

For each case can you let me know:

- The child's age

- Their gender

- What offence they were arrested for

- The drug or type of drugs involved (if known)

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I
provide a response for your attention.

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the
Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that
the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police, however
cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.

The information requested is not held in a format that allows its
retrieval within the permitted time constraints of the Act. Your request
asks for specific details of the drug involved.  This is generally in the
title of the offence, however in some cases this is not stated.  There are
403 offences where the type of drug is not specified in the offence.  In
order to obtain this information, we would have to manually review all of
those crimes.   Even at a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per record,
which we have considered as a reasonable minimum,  we have estimated that
to locate and extract this information would take over 33 hours, therefore
Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act would apply.  This section
does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for
information if the authority estimated that the cost of complying with the
request would exceed the appropriate limit of 18 hours, equating to
£450.00. 

You should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the
Act for your request.

However, although excess cost removes Northumbria Police's obligations
under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as a gesture of goodwill I have
supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available
before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded. I trust this
is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees
regulations for the remainder of your request.

Please find all of the information specific to your request without the
further detail as explained above.

The information has been provided in a format to avoid further exemptions
being applied.

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a
specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an
indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another.
Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the
procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses
between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative
purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual
property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be
strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as
amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not
re-use this information for any commercial purpose.

You may be interested to know that Northumbria Police routinely publish
information via the Disclosure Log. The aim of the Disclosure Log is to
promote openness and transparency by voluntarily placing information into
the public arena.

The Disclosure Log contains copies of some of the information that has
been disclosed by Northumbria Police in response to requests made under
the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Whilst it is not possible to publish all responses we will endeavour to
publish those where we feel that the information disclosed is in the wider
public interest.

The Disclosure Log will be updated once responses have been sent to the
requester.

I have provided the relevant link below.

[1]http://www.northumbria.police.uk/freedom...

How to complain

If you are unhappy with our decision or do not consider that we have
handled your request properly and we are unable to resolve this issue
informally, you are entitled to make a formal complaint to us under our
complaints procedure, attached below

[2]http://www.northumbria.police.uk/freedom...

If you are still unhappy after we have investigated your complaint and
reported to you the outcome, you may complain directly to the Information
Commissioner’s Office and request that they investigate to ascertain
whether we have dealt with your request in accordance with the Act.

Yours sincerely

Michael Cleugh

Data Protection and Disclosure Advisor

Direct Dial: 0191 2956941

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NORTHUMBRIA POLICE PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

The information contained in this message and any attachment(s) is confidential and intended only for the attention of the named organisation or individual to whom it is addressed.  The message may contain information that is covered by legal, professional or other privilege.  No mistake in transmission is intended to waive or compromise any such privilege.  This message has been sent over public networks and the sender cannot be held responsible for its integrity.

If you are not the intended recipient be aware that any disclosure, copying, distribution or action taken in reliance of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited, and is contrary to the provisions of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act, 1988 and of the Data Protection Act, 1998.

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For more information about Northumbria Police please visit our website - http://www.northumbria.police.uk

References

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