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:
Please tell me for each of the periods:
July 2018 - July 2019
July 2019 - July 2020
July 2020 - July 2021
- The total number of hate motivated incidents and crimes recorded in the years (please provide a monthly breakdown of possible):
- How many of those cases recorded were incidents of homophobia in the years (please provide a monthly breakdown of possible):
- From those cases above in relation to homophobic attacks, how many resulted in a conviction in the years:
- How many of those cases recorded were incidents of racism in the years: (please provide a monthly breakdown of possible):
- From those cases above in relation to racist attacks, how many resulted in a conviction in the years
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted within 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 already held statistically, nor is it held in a format that would allow its extraction from recording systems within the permitted 18 hour threshold. This is particularly relevant at points 3 & 5 , conviction data. In excess of 740 records would require a manual review to establish how many resulted in a conviction. Even at a conservative estimate of 3 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to locate & extract this information would take over 37 hours for these points alone and therefore 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.
As parts of your request would exceed the prescribed limit, as defined by the Act, there is no requirement for Northumbria Police to provide a response to the remaining parts of your request. However, in order to provide you with some assistance, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an initial assessment of the information that may be provided within the time constraints would be the remaining questions, with the removal of points 3 & 5, as set out above.
If this would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.
