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:
From all robberies registered by this police force between 1/1/2018 and 30/9/2019, how many suspects were identified thanks to CCTV footage?
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
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.
The information requested is not held in a format that allows its extraction within the permitted 18 hour threshold. There are no flags on crimes which would denote whether suspects had been identified due to CCTV footage and consequently the only way to do so would require a manual review of records to establish if that fact had been recorded.
An initial search of the Home Office codes 034/01 Robbery, 034/02 Assault with intent to rob, 034/03 Robbery (local sub-code re part 034/01) and 034/04 Assault with intent to rob (local sub-code re part 034/02) brought back in excess of 1600 cases. A manual review of each of those crimes would be needed to supply a response to this submission. This exercise would far exceed the 18 hour limit and therefore Section 12 is appropriate.
