FOI 0868-2024/25 Modern Slavery in the Waste Sector

Request
Q1. The number of records of contact, reported incidents, and recorded crimes from the past five years (1 January 2019 - 24 December 2024) of suspected modern slavery within the waste sector. Please can you provide a breakdown of the number of reports per year.  

Q2. Details of what the outcome of any completed investigation was - e.g were any arrests made. 

Q3. The number of times the Environment Agency reported suspected modern slavery to the police force over the past five years (1 January 2019 - 24 December 2024). Please can you provide a breakdown of the number of reports per year.  

Q4. Details of what these reports said. Please can this include the name of the site that was reported and details of the concerns raised. 

Q5. The number of incidents or recorded crimes of modern slavery within the waste sector that your police force referred to the National Crime Agency and/or partners in the Joint Waste Crime Unit (JWCU) in the last five years (1 January 2019 - 24 December 2024). Please state the number referred to the NCA, and the number referred to the JWCU separately.

Q6. Correspondence (including letters, emails, minutes of meetings and any relevant attachments) between the Environment Agency and constables, sergeants, and inspectors within the police force over the past year (1 January 2024 - 24 December 2024) relating to modern slavery within the waste sector. 

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. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is required to retrieve that information.

In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to manually review all modern slavery crime records, of which there are 395 in the timeframe specified, to determine the number related to the waste sector, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act. A further manual review would be required to determine if a referral had been made, and to determine who reported the offence, therefore further exceeding the appropriate limit.

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). However, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive meaningful information within the cost threshold.  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.