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:
I request the following information in relation to your force area only (please answer all questions for years 2020, 2021 and 2022 individually):
1. How many times did the force take a report (from the public or other agencies) about a child/children under the age of 18 being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
2. How many times did the force take a report (from the public or other agencies) about a child/children aged 6-12 years being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
3. How many times did the force take a report (from the public or other agencies) about a child/children aged 0-5 years being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
4. In relation to each report relating to a child/children aged 0-5 years, what action was taken by the police?
5. How many people have been arrested for offences relating to a child/children (of any age range) being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)? Please confirm for which offences they were arrested, their age and their gender.
6. How many people have been charged with offences relating to a child/children (of any age range) being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)? Please confirm for which offences they were charged, their age and their gender.
7. How many children (aged 0-5 years) have died as a result of being left being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
8. How many children (aged 6-12 years) have died as a result of being left being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
9. How many children (aged 0-5 years) have been injured as a result of being left being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
10. How many children (aged 6-12 years) have injured as a result of being left being left at home alone or unsupervised in any other space (to include vehicles)?
In Response:
Information Commissioners Office (ICO) guidelines state that:
A public authority must confirm or deny whether it holds the information requested unless the cost of this alone would exceed the appropriate limit.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the information you require is held by Northumbria Police as to actually determine if it is held would exceed the permitted 18 hours therefore Section 12(2) 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.
I have set out the reasons for this below.
We do not have a flag/indicator to separate this particular type of incident from others. Initial searches for the time period 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2022 for incidents where the incident comments had both of the following keywords; 'child' and 'home', the closing code was 'concern for person' and one of the two qualifying codes was 'vulnerable child' have brought back over 4,500 such incidents in the two year period, each of which would have to be manually reviewed to establish if any met the criteria of this submission. Even at a conservative estimate of 5 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to extract this information would take over 375 hours, therefore Section 12 is applicable.
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.
