FOI 0948-2024/25 Emergency Securing Services

Request
Scenarios and Usage:
Q1. In what scenarios do you use emergency securing services? Are there standard guidelines or policies governing when these services are used?

Frequency:
Q2. How many cases require emergency securing services annually (ideally from 2010 to 2024)? If possible, please provide a geographical breakdown and include the cause of forced entry (i.e. executing a search warrant, immigration, etc). 

Service Providers:
Q3. Who are the main providers or contractors engaged for emergency securing services?

Q4. What proportion of emergency securing services does each contractor achieve?

Expenditure and remuneration:
Q5. How are these services funded – is there a framework in place (if so, please provide detail)? Which parties are responsible for remunerating the emergency securing service contractor (please provide any data that shows a breakdown of this)?

Q6. If possible, please provide a breakdown of the services used (e.g. locksmith, boarding-up, etc) and the incurred cost, and the average cost per emergency securing process.

Q7. What has been the annual expenditure on emergency securing services for each year from 2010 to 2024?

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 to answer Question 6, it would be necessary to manually review hundreds of invoices in order to provide a breakdown of the services used, together with the incurred cost, which 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). I may be able to provide you with some information in response to Questions 1-5 and 7 if you revise and resubmit your response. 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.