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 would like all information regarding suicide incidents and people been talked down from the Wear Bridge from January 1st 2019 to February 22nd 2020.
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
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.
The information requested, if held, is not held statistically nor is it held in a format that allows its extraction within the time threshold.
We do not specifically record 'suicides' or 'attempted suicides' within incidents. There is no recording classification of "suicide", or “attempt suicide” and as such information is unlikely to be held. Additionally the determination of "suicide" can only be made by the coroner and any inquest will be some considerable time after our incident logs are finalised.
The Ministry of Justice website publishes Coroners statistics which may be of interest to you. You may wish to visit there to see if that assists.
