FOI 31513
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: HRC0031513/26
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 22nd September 2026. Please find below the response to your request:
I would like to request the following information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 concerning recruitment vetting undertaken by West Mercia Police.
For each of the five financial years 2021/22 to 2025/26, please provide:
The total number of applicants who underwent recruitment vetting, broken down by recorded ethnicity.
For each ethnicity group, the number whose initial vetting outcome was:
vetting granted;
vetting refused; and
withdrawn, not completed or other outcome, where recorded.
For applicants whose vetting was refused, please provide, broken down by recorded ethnicity:
the number who submitted a vetting appeal; the number of appeals upheld/successful; the number of appeals rejected/unsuccessful; and any other recorded appeal outcome.
Where refusal reasons are held in existing categories or codes that can be readily extracted, please provide the number of refusals within each category, broken down by ethnicity.
Please provide any existing statistical analysis, monitoring data, reports or equality assessments held by West Mercia Police concerning disproportionality by ethnicity in recruitment vetting outcomes during this period.
Where readily available, please also separate the figures in points 1-3 by applicant type (police officer, police staff, PCSO, Special Constable and other).
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 is not available in a readily retrievable format. There are over 6210 records. In order to ascertain whether the information you have requested is held would take in excess of 18 hours as each record would have to be checked individually to retrieve the information broken down as requested.
In accordance with s.17(5) of the Act, this acts as a Refusal Notice.
Under s.16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request.
Unfortunately, due to the volume of records that would need to be reviewed I am unable to identify information that could be supplied within the fees limit.