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. The number of speeding offences caught in your area, from the start of January 2019 to the end of January 2023. This includes fixed cameras, and those caught by police.
2. The roads where these speeding offences occurred.
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Fixed Penalty Unit of Northumbria Police.
I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
The information at point 1 is not already held statistically nor is it held in a format that would allow it to be extracted and calculated within the permitted 18 hour threshold. As such 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.
