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 "closure order" applications have you made in the last five years (2014,2015,2016,2017,2018)?
2. Please can you say what year the closure order was made and the reason given for it (eg drug use/noise) etc.
3. Also, whether the order was rejected or granted.
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Area Commands 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 centrally nor is it held in a format that allows its extraction within the permitted 18 hours. As not all closures relate to licensing matters, some residential properties are also effected by ASB legislation, there is no easy way to extract the information requested for the time period requested, or for a considerably lesser time period as extensive research would be required from staff at each Area Command. As we have estimated that to extract this information would take over 18 hours, 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.
