Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')
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:
1. How many reports of sexual assaults (excluding rapes) on police premises have been made to the force for the time period of 1 January 2019 to 27 December 2022.
2. How many people in respect of point 1 above were charged?
3 How many reports have been made to the force of rapes on police premises for the time period of 1 January 2019 to 27 December 2022.
4. How many people in respect of point 3 above were charged?
By police premises, I mean any location (including building, vehicle, vessel, aircraft or hovercraft) where police hold office or from where they carry out their duties.
Please provide the information broken down by year (i.e 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022).
5. How many reports of sexual assaults (excluding rapes) on university premises have been made to the force for the time period of 1 January 2019 to 27 December 2022.
6. How many people in respect of point 5 above were charged?
7. How many reports have been made to the force of rapes on university premises for the time period of 1 January 2019 to 27 December 2022.
8. How many people in respect of point 7 above were charged?
By university premises, I mean all land, buildings, facilities, and other property in the possession of or owned, leased, used, supervised, or controlled by a university within your jurisdiction.
Please provide the information broken down by year (i.e 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022).and please could you identify which university the reports relates to.
In Response:
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 in part by Northumbria Police, however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information requested is not already held statistically nor is it held in a format that would allow its extraction from systems within the permitted 18 hour time constraints. ‘Police premises’ is not a viable search method. Likewise your definition of ‘university premises’ is not a ‘location’ we can search for. We would not know what land/buildings/facilities/other property was in the possession of or owned, leased, used, supervised, or controlled by a university.
The only method would be to search each sexual assault and rape report for the 4 year time period requested to establish which had been recorded at the locations specified. This would entail a manual search of many thousands of such reports and as such 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.
When applying Section 12 exemption our duty to assist under Section 16 of the Act would normally entail that we contact you to determine whether it is possible to refine the scope of your request to bring it within the cost limits. However, from the information we have outlined above I see no reasonable way in which we can do so.
