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:
- How many times have police been called to Eldon Square shopping centre in Newcastle City Centre since 14th August 2019? Can you provide the date, type of incident (for example: anti-social behaviour, theft, assault) for each please.
- How many arrests have been made at Eldon Square shopping centre in Newcastle city centre since 14th August 2019? Can you detail the sex, age and suspected crime for each incident please.
In Response:
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 reason.
To establish a response at both points of your request would entail locating all incidents and crimes which encompass the foot beats which contain the area of Eldon Square and manually searching these for any addresses specific to Eldon Square only, as these foot beats also contain other areas of the City Centre which cannot be separated without a manual review of each incident/crime. Some 1,888 records would therefore require a manual review to pinpoint which were specific to ‘Eldon Square’ only. 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 157 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.
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.
