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Request
Under FOIA, please can you provide me with the following information for the entirety of the 2024 calendar year?
Q1. The total number of Freedom of Information requests responded to by the force for this calendar year (2024). This is not the total number of FOI requests received but rather the total number of decisions sent to respondents by the force. Please do not include responses to internal reviews for all parts of this request, only responses to original requests.
Q2. The total number of these decisions (the figure provided for part 1) which included a public interest test.
Q3. A breakdown of the total number of public interest tests provided in the response to part 2 which concluded that information should be released (i.e. the conclusion of the test favoured disclosure).
Q4. A breakdown of the total number of public interest tests provided in the response to part 2 which concluded information should not be released (i.e. the conclusion of the test favoured non-disclosure).
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.
Whether a public interest test was included is not mandatorily recorded and therefore, in order to provide the information in response to Questions 2, 3 and 4, a manual review of over a thousand requests would be required, 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). We may be able to provide information relating to Question 1 if you resubmit and omit Questions 2-4. 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.