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Request:
All questions relate to the past two years.
Q1. How many drivers involved in motoring offences have you recommended for prosecution?
Q2. Of those drivers you deemed responsible for causing fatal or serious injury collisions, how many were you aware were driving for work?
Q3. Of those cases where you deemed an at-work driver responsible for causing fatal or serious injury collisions, how often did you investigate the employer’s role in ensuring their duty of care to drivers and the public? (For clarity, employers have a duty of care, and must under the Health and Safety Act ensure that vehicles are roadworthy, that at-work drivers are unimpaired, trained, qualified and insured, and that steps are taken to manage work-related road safety.)
Q4. Of those drivers involved in serious injury or fatal collisions, how many had previous motoring convictions?
Q5. How often, when an employed driver is suspected of being in serious breach of the law – for instance intoxication, unroadworthy vehicle, driving hours rules breach, driving dangerously etc - have you investigated employer culpability or notified their employer?
Q6. If you do not contact employers of at-work drivers charged with or suspected of unlawful behaviour, why not?
Q7. How often has your force presented a case to the CPS for corporate manslaughter following a fatal collision caused by an at-work driver?
Q8. How often has your force presented a case to the CPS involving an organisation’s managers or directors causing or permitting unlawful driving of any kind?
Q9. How often have you referred any road safety breaches (on a public road) to the HSE for further investigation at a company or organisational level?
Q10. What proportion of cases involving unsafe, unlawful or unroadworthy HGV or PSV vehicles or vocational drivers did you refer to the traffic commissioner?
Response:
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.
I will break down your request as per the questions numbered above.
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 relation to Q2, Q3, Q7, Q8, Q9 & Q10 this information, if held is not mandatorily recorded within a searchable field. To obtain this information, we would be required to carry out a manual review of all incidents to determine which, if any are relevant to your request. This manual review would involve thousands of reports, which would exceed the time allowed under the act.
In relation to Q4 this information may be held across multiple crime recording systems including both North Yorkshire Police systems and national police systems for offences which have occurred outside of our force area. To obtain this information we would be required to review all incidents relevant to the request, then cross reference those with any other information held on both NYP and national systems to avoid duplication. This would involve hundreds of reports, which would further exceed the time allowed under the act.
In relation to Q5 this information is not recorded in a way which is searchable for the purposes of your request. To obtain this information, we would be required to carry out a manual review of all arrests for the timeframe required to determine how many have resulted in a disclosure to the employer. This manual review would involve hundreds of arrests, which would further exceed the time allowed under the act. Further information relating to the common law police disclosure scheme can be found here Common Law Police Disclosure - GOV.UK
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, we may be able to provide you with some information relating to Q1 & Q6 if you resubmit your request. 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.