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:
- How many incidents of assaults on a HGV driver were recorded in the last 5 years - from 2015 up until 1st October 2019? (Please can I have the data broken down year by year (i.e sequentially 2015, 2016, etc))
- In each incident please state the type of assault (whether it was verbal or physical)?
- In each incident please state whether a weapon was used , and if so what it was?
In Response:
Information Commissioners Office (ICO) guidelines state that:
A public authority must confirm or deny whether it holds the information requested unless the cost of this alone would exceed the appropriate limit.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the information you require is held by Northumbria Police as to actually determine if it is held would exceed the permitted 18 hours therefore Section 12(2) 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.
I have set out the reasons for this below.
In 2019 to date there have been in excess of 40,000 violence against the person offences recorded. To establish which, if any, had the victim recorded as being an HGV driver would require all those reports being manually reviewed. (It should be noted that the occupation field is not a mandatory field for completion). This cannot be achieved within the 18 hour time constraint, even for that 10 month time period. Section 12 is therefore appropriate.
