Police Officer Uplift - 330/23

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:

With regard to the recruiting of Police Officers since April 2020 (Home Officer uplift):

1. Please provide the number of applications received for the role of Constable.

2. Please provide a break down of applications by Gender, Ethnicity (ONS 4+1)

3. Please provide the number of appointments made for the role of Constable.

4. Please provide a break down of appointments by Gender, Ethnicity (ONS 4+1) and Faith.

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 People Services Department of Northumbria Police.  I can confirm that the information you have requested is held by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you as follows with the below noted.

Applications from deleted accounts will not appear in results. Police Now applicants do now apply through Northumbria Police.

Northumbria Police do not hold ethnicity data in the format ONS4+1.

New recruits in a calendar year does not directly correlate to applications in that year. Applicants from one year may be recruited in a later year.

1. 5721

2.

Candidate Gender	Count
Male	2756
Female	2220
Prefer to self-describe	10
Prefer not to say	28
Unknown	707
Grand Total	5721

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Candidate ethnicity	Count
White - English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British	4519
White - Irish	20
White - Gypsy or Irish Traveller	4
White - Any other White background	145
Mixed - White and Black Caribbean	10
Mixed - White and Black African	7
Mixed - White and Asian	23
Mixed - Any other Mixed/Multiple ethnic background	28
Asian - Indian	29
Asian - Pakistani	55
Asian - Bangladeshi	22
Asian - Chinese	9
Asian - Any other Asian background	24
Black - African	29
Black - Caribbean	1
Black - Any other Black/African/Caribbean background	2
Black - English/Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish/British	1
Other - Arab	5
Other - Any other ethnic group	13
Prefer not to say	34
Unknown	741
Grand Total	5721

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3 & 4.

As the information you have requested is accessible by other means I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  You should therefore consider this a refusal for your request.

I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.

Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means

Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.

Sex and ethnicity are available on Police Officer uplift statistics - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Please note the data on Gov.uk data will show a new recruit in October 2020 that is not a constable as per this request; this is a direct entry inspector.

Data for this quarter (01/01/23 to 31/03/23) will likely be published in April 2023, therefore the following exemption is applicable.

This is an ongoing publication scheme, and any information not already published that will be published at a future date is exempt under Section 22 ‘Information intended for future publication’

Section 22 Information Intended for future publication

(1) Information is exempt information if -

(a) the information is held by the public authority with a view to its publication, by the authority or any other person, at some future date (whether determined or not),

(b) the information was already held with a view to such publication at the time the request for information was made, and

(c) it is reasonable in all circumstances that the information should be withheld from disclosure until the date referred to in paragraph.

This exemption requires us to apply a Public Interest Test to decide if the information you require should be released ahead of the scheduled report.

Public Interest Test

Factors Favouring Disclosure:-

Disclosure of information not yet published would enable the public to be better informed of such information, as this enables more accurate and relevant public comment and debate to take place.

Factors Favouring Non-Disclosure:-

The exemption engaged in this case specifically requires us to simply look at the public interest in delaying the release of information that will automatically be disclosed in the future.  As it is know that this information will be published at a later date, to gather any information prior to the requirement to do so for the next scheduled publication, in order to answer this request would not be an efficient use of resources and finance as it would divert staff from their core duties and would involve a disproportionate use of resources, particularly at this time of economic concerns.

Balance Test

It is acknowledged that both accountability and public awareness are enhanced by the disclosure of this type of information.  However, this will be achieved through the publication of the intended information.

The Section 21 and, in this case Section 22 exemptions were specifically laid down by parliament to benefit those authorities who proactively publish information.  To constantly produce new and up to date elements of currently published or information intended for future publication in an attempt to satisfy an additional need outside of any scheduled publication would render these exemptions less effective and remove the benefits of proactive publication.  For this reason it would be an inappropriate use of resources to carry out further research to satisfy your request.

Decision

Therefore, at this time, for the reasons outlined above, the public interest is met by the scheduled publication of this data. 

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 you should consider this to be a refusal notice under Section 17 of the Act for that part of your request.

Faith

Religion	Count
Buddhist	1
Christian (including Church of England, Catholic, Protestant and all other Christian denominations)	216
Hindu	1
Muslim	12
Prefer not to Say	20
No Religion	449
Unknown/Not Stated	342
Any other religion	5
Grand Total	1046

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete.  However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes.  The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system.  As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.