FOI 1047-2024/25 Parental Leave

Request
Q1. Your parental leave policies, including paternity and maternity leave. If you have different policies for police officers and staff, please include both separately. 

Q2. For the most recent three years you have data, a) How many officers were eligible for paternity leave? And b) How many officers took paternity leave, and for how many weeks on average? 

Q3. If you have this data, what % of officers who have resigned voluntarily over the last three years cited the impact of their job on their family as a reason?

Extent and Result of Searches to Locate Information
To locate the information relevant to your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police.

I can confirm that some of the information you have requested is held by North Yorkshire Police.  

Decision
I have today decided to disclose the following information to you.

Q1. I am exempting this information pursuant to Section 21 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act) as this information is available on our website using the below:
Published items - maternity leave | North Yorkshire Police

Section 17 of the Act requires North Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Section 21 – Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means
Section 21 is an absolute class based exemption and I am not required to consider the harm or public interest when applying this exemption.

Pursuant to Section 17(1) of the Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice in response to this part of your request.

Q2. All eligible Police officers and staff are able to take ‘Maternity and Adoption Support Leave’. The procedure states “This person may be the child’s father or the spouse, civil or other partner of the mother or of the adopter”.

Please see the below table showing the number of officers employed by North Yorkshire Police, as at 1 January each year, together with the number of officers taking Maternity and Adoption Support Leave. Information as to whether one or two weeks’ leave was taken is not held.

Q3. Percentages are not held.

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.