FOI 378937
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 378937
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 18th December 2024. Please find below the response to your request:
Please can you provide me with the following information for the entirety of the 2024 calendar year?
1/ The total number of Freedom of Information requests responded to by the force for this calendar year (2024). This is not the total number of FOI requests received but rather the total number of decisions sent to respondents by the force. Please do not include responses to internal reviews for all parts of this request, only responses to original requests.
2/ The total number of these decisions (the figure provided for part 1) which included a public interest test.
3/ A breakdown of the total number of public interest tests provided in the response to part 2 which concluded that information should be released (i.e. the conclusion of the test favoured disclosure).
4/ A breakdown of the total number of public interest tests provided in the response to part 2 which concluded information should not be released (i.e. the conclusion of the test favoured non-disclosure).
Reply
Your request for information has been considered in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (“the Act”), and I am not obliged to provide the information requested.
S.12(1) of the Act states that a public authority is not obliged to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the “appropriate limit”. For police forces in England and Wales, the "appropriate limit" is £450 or 18 hours of work as set by the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
The information you have requested regarding is not available in a readily retrievable format. This information regarding whether the public interest test (PIT) concluded the information should be released or not may be mentioned within the Freedom of Information request records held by West Mercia Police however, to retrieve the requested information, if held, would involve a manual trawl and search of those Freedom of Information request records held.
We do not record the number of requests received per calendar year, but for each financial year we receive circa 1200 requests a year. We would need to look at each individual request to ascertain whether the PIT concluded the information should be released or not. West Mercia Police would estimate that processing such an undertaking to take around 40 hours based on 2 minutes per request (1200x2/60).
Therefore the cost of providing you with this information, if held, is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004. In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, s.17(5), this acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.
Under s.16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request. It may assist you to be aware that West Mercia Police’s data is held per financial year (alternatively individual monthly figures are held) and we do record some related information since June 2024 such as the number of responses where information was provided in full, in part or withheld entirely. However, we do not record data on the application of the PIT, this is articulated in the individual responses.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint. Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please contact the Information Compliance Unit quoting the reference number above.