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 breaches of non-molestation orders have been recorded by your force in each of the following financial years 2015/16; 2016/17; 2017/18
For each year please provide a breakdown of the outcomes i.e. No further action, charges, summons, etc etc
2. How many breaches of occupation orders have been recorded by your force in each of the following financial years 2015/16; 2016/17; 2017/18
For each year please provide a breakdown of the outcomes i.e. No further action, charges, summons, etc etc
3. How many breaches of restraining orders have been recorded by your force in each of the following financial years 2015/16; 2016/17; 2017/18
For each year please provide a breakdown of the outcomes i.e. No further action, charges, summons, etc etc
4. How many DVPNs were authorised by your force in each of the following financial years 2015/16; 2016/17; 2017/18.
5. How many applications for DVPOs were made to your force and their respective outcome at court in each of the following financial years 2015/16; 2016/17; 2017/18.
For each year please provide a breakdown of the outcomes.
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 by Northumbria Police, however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information is not held in a format that allows its retrieval within the permitted time constraints of the Act, particularly at question 2. The PVP policy on breach of an Occupation Orders is as follows:
"Breach of an occupation order is not a criminal offence however, the Family Court can attach a power of arrest.Officers must ensure that a power of arrest has been attached prior to arrest."
There is not a specific Home Office code relating to a breach of an occupation order. Our Custody department have confirmed a breach of an occupation order would be dealt with under the same Home Office code as an arrest using a warrant. There were over 2000 warrants issued in 2016/17 alone. Each of those would require a manual review in order to search for the information. Even at a conservative estimate of 1 minute per warrant, we have estimated that to extract this information would take over 33 hours. The number of hours would treble for the other time periods.
As we have estimated that to extract this information would take well over the permitted time constraints of 18 hours, 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 part 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.
If that would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.
