Rivers deaths in York
Neil Wilby made this Freedom of Information request to North Yorkshire Police
This request has been closed to new correspondence. Contact us if you think it should be reopened.
Dear North Yorkshire Police (NYP),
In October, 2020 I wrote and published this article:
https://neilwilby.com/category/north-yor...
Within it is referenced an incident involving offensive posting on a newspaper website by a NYP Force Control Room operative.
Please disclose the following by way of the Freedom of Information Act:
1. Was the operative served with a Police Regulations notice?
2. If so, what were the Standards of Professional Behaviour allegedly breached?
3. If so, in what form did the disposal of such proceedings take?
4. Was the subject operative an authorised contributor to NYP social media account output
(i) at the material time (ii) currently?
Yours faithfully,
Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Dear North Yorkshire Police (NYP),
I am writing to request an internal review of North Yorkshire Police's handling of my FOI request 'Rivers deaths in York'.
The grounds for complaint are:
1. You have breached section 10 of the Act.
2. You have breached section 17 of the Act.
3. To the extent that, in my respectful submission,
(i) the information is being deliberately withheld by NYP to avoid further reputational damage. I hold an account from one of the bereaved mothers that heavily supports that proposition.
(ii) the information is being deliberately withheld as part of a wider, and long-running, campaign of harassment, conducted by the chief constable and at least one other very senior officer against a journalist following his vocation. A simple reference to other requests made by this applicant to NYP, via the WhatDoTheyKnow website, lend significant weight to that assertion.
All rights of remedy, either by way of section 77 of the Act, or by civil proceedings are, accordingly and herewith, reserved.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...
Yours faithfully,
Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Thank you for your email, please treat this as an acknowledgement of receipt.
We are currently experiencing a very high volume of requests for information. This is causing a significant delay in response times for the below requests:
Court Orders
CAFCASS
Section 7
Section 37
Subject Access Requests
Freedom of Information Requests
Although every effort will be made to ensure a response is provided within statutory deadlines, due to current circumstances delays may be unavoidable. We apologise for any inconvenience and will endeavour to process your request as quickly as is practicable.
Your email will be dealt with accordingly.
PLEASE NOTE: If your query is to address an urgent safeguarding concern then please redirect your enquiry to the Vulnerability Assessment Team email: [email address]
The Vulnerability Assessment Team is available during office hours Monday to Friday.
Civil Disclosure Unit
Dear Mr Wilby,
Thank you for the below email.
Your internal review request has been logged under reference IR
0569.2020-21.
Kind regards,
Amie McNairn
Collar Number 4559
Legal Officer (Civil Disclosure) North Yorkshire Police
Evolve Legal Services
Joint Corporate Legal Services, North Yorkshire Police HQ, Alverton Court,
Crosby Road, Northallerton DL6 1BF
DX 68810 Northallerton 2
[1]www.northyorkshire.police.uk
Committed to the Code of Ethics
[2]cid:image001.png@01D5DA73.A14697B0
Evolve Legal Services is a collaboration delivering professional services
on behalf of the Chief Constables and elected Commissioners of Cleveland
Police, Durham Constabulary and North Yorkshire Police.
THIS EMAIL AND ANY ATTACHMENT(S) MAY BE SUBJECT TO LEGAL PROFESSIONAL
PRIVILEGE - PLEASE DO NOT DISCLOSE THE CONTENT TO ANYONE ELSE WITHOUT
ASKING JOINT CORPORATE LEGAL SERVICES
Dear Civil Disclosure,
A complaint, by way of Sections 50 and 77 of the Act, is being prepared for submission to the Information Commissioner's Office. They will, no doubt, be in touch with you in due course.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Wilby
Investigative Journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Dear Mr Wilby,
Please find attached a response to your Freedom of Information request 692.2020-21.
Regards
Caroline Williams
Legal Officer (Civil Disclosure)
T/Team Leader
North Yorkshire Police
Collar Number 5982
Committed to the Code of Ethics
Evolve Legal Services
Evolve Legal Services is a collaboration delivering professional services on behalf of the Chief Constable and elected Commissioners of Cleveland Police, Durham Constabulary and North Yorkshire Police.
Joint Corporate Legal Services, North Yorkshire Police HQ, Alverton Court, Crosby Road, Northallerton DL6 1BF
DX 68810 Northallerton 2
Dial 101, press option 2 and ask for me by my full name or collar number. If using my collar number, please state each number individually.
Dear North Yorkshire Police ("NYP"),
I am writing to request a second internal review of North Yorkshire Police's handling of my Freedom of Information Act request 'Rivers deaths in York'.
The grounds for complaint are as follows:
1. To almost any independent observer, with a working knowledge of the Act, this has the appearance another pre-formed finalisation by NYP's hierarchy not to disclose information to this particular journalist, whom has exposed their persistent, mendacious lawlessness and failing after failing in the running of their force. A significant number, it must be said, via FOIA requests. As such, the decision maker(s) has/have breached the fundamental principles of requests being both applicant and motive blind.
2. More crucially, relying on section 45(b) as an exemption to frustrate disclosure is, in my respectful submission, both wholly misconceived and, very arguably, mischievous.
2. In so doing, again in my respectful submission, NYP has breached both section 17 and section 77 of the Act.
3. To the extent that;
(i) it is part of the wider, and long-running, campaign of harassment, referred to in the first internal review request against a journalist following his vocation as "social watchdog" (a term coined by Upper Tier Tribunal judge, Nicholas Wikeley). Again, the reviewer is invited to reference other requests made by this applicant to NYP, via the WhatDoTheyKnow website, that lend significant weight to that assertion.
(ii) A number of Code of Ethics breaches are self-evident.
4. The reviewer's attention is drawn to the fact that, in 2018, I succeeded in First Tier Tribunal proceedings (EA/2017/0076) against the NYP's Civil Disclosure Unit in a challenge to a section 45(b) exemption. It may not be entirely a coincidence, but it was the very same disclosure officer (Caroline Williams) who signed off the finalisation of that request.
5. Early in those proceedings it was established, beyond any doubt, that section 45(b) can only be relied upon by a public authority (or police force) if a distinction is made between section 40 (5) (b) (i) and 40 (5) (b) (ii). No such distinction is made here. Guidance issued by the Information Commissioner's Office is very clear: In all cases, a public authority needs to consider the details of the exemption. In any refusal notice under the Act it is necessary to explain exactly which subsection is engaged, and why.
https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisatio...
6. It should be self-evident to the reviewer that Parts 1. to 3. of the request are, effectively, consecutive and, as such, conjoined by the same narrow issue. Part 4. of the request is, however, a discrete matter and should have been subject to separate analysis by the decision maker. It plainly wasn't.
7. Taken together, paras 5. and 6 above strongly support the proposition, advanced at para 1 above, of a pre-formed decision, probably rushed and forced onto the disclosure officer by her superiors, and generic, rather than fact specific, reasoning is attached to it.
8. Further, and in any event, the disclosure requested is not personal information. The request was carefully framed to circumvent that possibility. Parts 1, 2 and 3 are of the same class routinely posted on the NYP website regarding misconduct outcomes: https://northyorkshire.police.uk/access-...
9. The reviewer is also invited to (NCND) consider Foster v IC (EA/2013/0176) in assessing whether the 'neither confirm nor deny' can sustain.
10. There is no prejudice to the rights and freedoms or legitimate interests of an unidentified officer in disclosing the requested information There are also no Article 8 Convention rights in issue..
10. The public interest test is deficient insofar as it raises no points of argument specific to the requested disclosure at either at Parts 1,2 and 3 or, separately, point 4. Indeed, the reviewer may well find that no such test was carried out.
11. The presumption at the outset of any such test is to disclose the information, a point not in evidence in this finalisation. Further, it is respectfully submitted that there can be no sustainable points placed in the balance that outweigh the interests of bereaved families knowing the truth and that miscreant officers have been appropriately dealt with in accordance with the applicable statutory framework. The conduct complained of was discreditable conduct, not a matter to be treated so lightly as NYP appear to have done.
A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r...
Yours faithfully,
Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Dear Mr Wilby,
Thank you for your email below in regards to your request for an internal review.
Please accept this email as acknowledgment. I have logged this as a internal review.
Regards,
Chris Buckton
Collar Number 4338
Legal Officer - North Yorkshire Police, Civil Disclosure Unit
Evolve Legal Services
Evolve Legal Services is a collaboration delivering professional services on behalf of the Chief Constable and elected Commissioners of Cleveland Police, Durham Constabulary and North Yorkshire Police.
Joint Corporate Legal Services, North Yorkshire Police HQ, Alverton Court, Crosby Road, Northallerton DL6 1BF
DX 68810 Northallerton 2
Civil Disclosure Direct Dial: 01609 643526
www.northyorkshire.police.uk
Committed to the Code of Ethics
Dial 101, press option 2 and ask for me by my full name or collar number, if using my collar number please state each number individually
THIS EMAIL AND ANY ATTACHMENT(S) MAY BE SUBJECT TO LEGAL PROFESSIONAL PRIVILEGE - PLEASE DO NOT DISCLOSE THE CONTENT TO ANYONE ELSE WITHOUT ASKING JOINT CORPORATE LEGAL SERVICES
Dear North Yorkshire Police (NYP),
Thank you for acknowledging the internal review request (IRR).
The history of this request has now been storified andpublished at this weblink:
https://neilwilby.com/2021/03/15/sold-do...
It will be updated further, either when NYP has provided a response to the IRR or when a second complaint is made to the Information Commissioner's Office regarding non-disclosure of the requested information. Whichever event comes first. The latter is diarised for 14th April, 2021.
Yours faithfully,
Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Dear Buckton, Chris,
A section 50 complaint has been lodged with the Information Commissioner's Office.
Yours sincerely,
Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Dear Applicant,
Please see attached response to your internal review.
Kind regards.
Waseem Khan
Police Lawyer (Employment/Civil Disclosure)
North Yorkshire Police
Collar Number 4538
Committed to the Code of Ethics
Please Note: North Yorkshire Police Email addresses have now changed and
the .PNN has been removed. Please update your records for NYP contacts
accordingly.
Evolve Legal Services
Evolve Legal Services is a collaboration delivering professional services
on behalf of the Chief Constable and elected Commissioners of Cleveland
Police, Durham Constabulary and North Yorkshire Police.
Joint Corporate Legal Services, North Yorkshire Police HQ, Alverton Court,
Crosby Road, Northallerton DL6 1BF
DX 68810 Northallerton 2
Dial 101, press option 2 and ask for me by my full name or collar number.
If using my collar number, please state each number individually.
[1]www.northyorkshire.police.uk
THIS EMAIL AND ANY ATTACHMENT(S) MAY BE SUBJECT TO LEGAL PROFESSIONAL
PRIVILEGE - PLEASE DO NOT DISCLOSE THE CONTENT TO ANYONE ELSE WITHOUT
ASKING JOINT CORPORATE LEGAL SERVICES
References
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Dear North Yorkshire Police (NYP),
Firstly, this internal review request has taken over 36 weeks to finalise. The information access request was submitted almost one year ago to the day.
Even by NYP's very low standards, a police force nationally recognised as one that regards the laws of the land and/or statutory guidance, as simply not applicable to them, that is beyond disgraceful.
In my respectful submission, the disclosure officer looks, to this applicant's experienced eye, as though he has spent around 20 minutes working on the internal review. It is also very arguable that the same officer gives the appearance of knowing little, or nothing, about the applicable statutory framework, the College of Policing's Authorised Professional Practice or how to properly weigh factors in the balance when conducting a public interest test.
Further, and in any event, the finalisation does not even go remotely close to addressing the points of complaint so carefully, and methodically, set out in the internal review request. That is regarded, understandably one might very fairly say, as a continuation of this police force's lengthy campaign of harassment against this particular applicant. The first intention, always it seems, is to vex and annoy with responses of this class.
The handling of this request throughout is, on any independent view, a genuinely shameful effort by a law enforcement agency, and a qualified solicitor, and one that will come under further public scrutiny as this request grinds towards a Tribunal hearing. A further section 50 complaint, in addition to the one already filed regarding this request, will be submitted to the Information Commissioner's Office, as a necessary stepping stone, early next week.
Public interest in the death of Steven O'Neill remains high and the response to this recently published article bears testimony to that: http://neilwilby.com/2021/11/06/inquest-...
Yours faithfully,
Neil Wilby
Investigative journalist
Twitter: @Neil_Wilby
Web: neilwilby.com
Thank you for your disclosure enquiry, please treat this as an acknowledgement of receipt.
Please note, we are currently experiencing some significant delays within the Unit due to a high volume of disclosure requests. Although every effort will be made to ensure a response is provided within statutory deadlines, due to the present circumstances delays may be unavoidable.
We apologise for any inconvenience and will endeavour to process your request as quickly as is practicable, but we ask for your patience and understanding if you do experience a delay.
As the delivery of your rights is important, to assist we have provided a list of frequently asked questions below. If your query can be answered using the information provided, please can you recall your original message so we can prioritise other requests.
• Email address: [email address]<mailto:[email address]>
• Telephone number: 01609 643526
• Postal address for Civil Disclosure Unit: Civil Disclosure Unit, Joint Corporate Legal Services, North Yorkshire Police HQ, Alverton Court, Crosby Road, Northallerton, North Yorkshire, DL6 1BF
• Payments: Cheques payable to North Yorkshire PFCC, or BACS -details provided on request
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Additional fees may apply
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If you are an insurance company and are wishing to request Police information such as a crime/incident report in relation to a theft / stolen vehicle then you will need to submit the appropriate Appendix D(b) form signed by your insured. acpo-abi-mou-exchange-of-info.pdf<https://www.abi.org.uk/globalassets/site...>
Forms can be emailed or posted to the above address.
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Legal aid evidence - North Yorkshire Police | North Yorkshire Police<https://northyorkshire.police.uk/access-...>
Forms are also available at police stations, or can be requested by emailing Civil Disclosure.
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Please note that we seek representations from the individual and give them 14 days to respond so requests may take up to 4 weeks to process.
Invoices will be sent by post with disclosure following consent being given to the fee.
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Visit any Police Station,
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Subject access request - North Yorkshire Police | North Yorkshire Police<https://northyorkshire.police.uk/access-...>
Two forms of identification are required that show your name, date of birth and current address before a request becomes valid (copies and certified copies will be accepted).
Further information is available on the force website.
Although every effort will be made to ensure a response is provided within statutory deadlines, due to current circumstances delays may be unavoidable. We apologise for any inconvenience and will endeavour to process your request as quickly as is practicable.
Your email will be dealt with accordingly.
PLEASE NOTE: If your query is to address an urgent safeguarding concern then please redirect your enquiry to the Vulnerability Assessment Team email: [email address]
The Vulnerability Assessment Team is available during office hours Monday to Friday.
Civil Disclosure Unit
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