Digital forensics - 124/20

Date Responded 05 February 2020

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 much was spent on the digital forensics unit -  for clarity purposes I am trying to find out the actual amount that was allocated to the digital forensics for the year 2019 what percentage of your whole budget does this equate to and did this unit stay on budget over spend or under spend ?
  2. A detailed breakdown as possible of the costs of training officers in the different fields of this unit , so to be more clearer i am trying to find out the total amount of money spent on training/re-training/further educating of officers in each different area of this unit. What was the percentage of the total budget used for each specific unit/field or department in the digital forensics unit that was solely used for the training, re-training or further educating of officers in each specific field. 

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with both the Finance and People Services Departments of Northumbria Police.  I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police.

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

Please note that for both parts of your request regarding percentages – Northumbria Police do not hold “percentages” and are not obliged to create information in order to provide a response to a request.  Therefore no information is held in relation to these parts of your request.

  1. This information is not held.  Northumbria Police does not devolve budgets down to this departmental level.
  2. There are no different fields within this unit, therefore the information supplied refers to the whole of the Digital Forensic Unit.  The People Services Department have identified external training courses for the Digital Forensic Unit in 2019 and the Finance Department can confirm the external cost of these was £ 41,035 (including accommodation costs).

Disclaimer

Due to the different methods of recording information across 43 forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied (within cost) by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.

The information we have supplied to you is likely to contain intellectual property rights of Northumbria Police. Your use of the information must be strictly in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) or such other applicable legislation. In particular, you must not re-use this information for any commercial purpose.

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