School Based Police Officers - 561/22

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 many school-based police officers (including Safer Schools Officers or personnel bearing other titles that may cover police staff who spend some of their time on a school site) are there currently in your police force?

If possible, please can this be broken down by:

i. The name of the school

ii. The number of officers based at the school currently

 

2. Are there plans to introduce or add more in the 2022/2023 academic year, if so, how many?

 

3. Has there been any consultation with any of the listed school-stakeholders (below) in decisions to introduce or add school-based police officers (including Safer Schools Officers or personnel bearing other titles that may cover police staff who spend some of their time on a school site) to any of the schools:

• School governors
• Parents and carers of school children
• School children
• Local community groups

 

If yes, please can you provide details of the consultation and any minutes/reports that were compiled.

In Response:

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the People Systems and Safeguarding Department 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.

 

1. There are no police officers or police staff based in schools within Northumbria Police.  However, although technically not school based, there is one College Liaison Officer, who is police staff, based at Northumberland College.

 

There are currently three police staff members whose roles involve providing schools with educational support in relation to safeguarding topics: one Safeguarding Schools Coordinator, and two Community Advisors.  The Coordinator role is an administrative one and does not involve spending any time on a school site.  The two Community Advisor roles involve visiting school sites.

 

Please see the attached document titled “FOI 561-22 – School Based Police Officers” for the names of the schools visited in 2021 by the two Community Advisors.

 

2. There are no plans to introduce additional police officer or police staff to school related roles.

 

3. No information held.  Northumbria Police are not aware of any consultation that has taken place with any of the listed school-stakeholders.

 

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.

 

If you decide to write an article / use the enclosed data we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies, or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.

 

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.