FOI 0179-2024/25 Vetting

Request
1. What proportion of police officers vetted during the recruitment process passed the vetting process?

2. What proportion of a) white b) black c) Asian d) Arab e) Chinese f) Indian g) mixed white and black h) mixed black and Asian i) non-white officers passed the vetting process?

3. Please note: for the second request regarding the ethnic background of the individuals, please provide all the information you have regarding each ethnicity, and the non-white statistic as well. 

Extent of Searches to Locate Information
Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information.  

Decision
I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, if held, is not in an easily retrievable format. The current process for working the information requested is not broken down into police officers and police staff. In order to work out officer specific officer data for the time periods of 03/06/2019 – 31/05/2021 & 01/10/2023-03/06/2024 all recruitment would need to be manually read to break down into officer data. In order to retrieve the requested information it would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. 

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). A refinement suggestion is that we do have figures for the period of 01/06/2021 – 30/09/2023, this is officer specific and readily available. Therefore, if your request was refined to cover 01/06/2021 – 30/09/2023 this can be provided. If you wish to discuss this please do not hesitate to contact me.

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that this force’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.