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:
Please disclose, since March 23 2020.
1. How many reports of alleged Covid breaches at places of worship have been investigated by your organisation.
For each incident please disclose.
a) The type of institution (Catholic church, mosque, Hindu temple etc)
b) The nature of the alleged breach, as it was recorded by your body (For example: A caller claims that 40 people have gathered at a temple to worship)
c) What action was taken (Fine, NFA etc)
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Fixed Penalty Unit 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.
1. 3
a) 3 x Churches
b) 1 x gathering of more than 2 households in Church
1 x reports of people gathering in Church this is linked to other emails we have received and a warning letter has been issued re gatherings but places of worship are allowed to remain open under the restrictions provided they are covid secure
1 x Restrictions in relation to places of worship and they are encouraged to move to online methods but they can remain open if they are covid secure to deliver services
c) 2 x warning letters
1 x NFA
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.
