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 am seeking information about Data Subject Access Requests (DSARs) submitted to your organisation in recent years.
In particular, I would like to know:
1. How many DSARs you received in the following financial years?
2017/18
2018/19
2019/20 (an estimate will be fine)
2. Could you break down the figures received by the Directorate to which the DSARs were made or the Directorate that fulfilled the DSAR e.g. HR; Customer Services etc?
3. For each year, the number of DSARs which were processed within statutory timescales? Again, it would be helpful if this could be broken down by Directorate?
4. For each year, the number of DSARs which were not processed within statutory timescales (if any), by Directorate?
5. For each year, the number of complaints received in relation to any aspect of DSAR processing (if any), by Directorate?
6. The estimated number FTE employees involved in DSAR processing within your organisation?
7. The estimated number of man-hours spent by your organisation on DSAR processing, by Directorate?
8. The estimated number of employees who have received accredited training regarding DSAR processing?
9. Is DSAR processing delivered by a centralised, corporate team or at a directorate level? Please describe
10. For each year, the amount of money your organisation has specifically ring-fenced for DSAR processing?
11. For each year, the amount of money your organisation actually spent on DSAR processing? Estimates are acceptable
12. For each year, have you ever outsourced DSAR processing activity? If yes, what was the the total spend for each year?
13. For each year, have you ever employed agency staff for DSAR processing activity? If yes, what was the the total spend for each year?
In Response:
Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Information Management Unit of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held, in part, by Northumbria Police however cannot be disclosed for the following reasons.
To establish a response for point 2 alone would require approximately 1,173 records to be located and manually reviewed to establish which met the criteria specified. Even at a conservative estimate of 3 minutes per record, which we have considered as reasonable, we have estimated that to extract this information would take in excess of 58 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.
It should also be noted that for points 3, 4 and 5 the above exemption is applicable also.
However, in order to provide you with some assistance, under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, an initial assessment of the information that may be provided within the time constraints would be points 1, 6, 8 (as an accurate figure not an estimate), 9, 12 and 13.
If this would be useful, you may wish to refine and resubmit your request accordingly.
It should be noted that for point 7 – no information is held as we do not record estimates. Points 10 and 11 – no information held – this information is not recorded separately.
