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 after a yearly breakdown of the type of drug people have tested positive for in relation to drug-driving offences.
In particular, are you able to provide me with:
A breakdown of the total number of people who tested positive for each of the 16 drugs listed in section 5A of the Road Traffic Act 1988. Please could you provide a breakdown for the past five years, starting with March 2015 - February 2016, March 2016 - February 2017, March 2017 - February 2018, March 2018 - February 2019 and March 2019 - February 2020.
In Response:
We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.
As advised in our acknowledgement email – this request has been aggregated with your colleagues request (FOI 401/20 refers) with regards to time constraints under the Act, as they refer to the same subject area – Drug Driving. We asked that you confirm you would like to withdraw your request in light of your colleagues request however we have not received further communication from yourself.
As the information you have requested is extremely similar as that requested by your colleague for FOI 401/19, I have not provided you with a copy of the information and will rely on Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. You should therefore consider this a refusal for your request.
I have provided an explanation to this exemption below.
Section 21 (1) - Information accessible by other means
Information which is reasonably accessible to the applicant is exempt information.
This information has been asked for by your colleague in an earlier FOI request and I assume you would be able to have sight of this response. However, if not I can advise that the response to FOI 401/20 is published on the Northumbria Police Disclosure Log, a link to which is provided below.
