Quickly exit this site by pressing the Escape key Leave this site
We use some essential cookies to make our website work. We’d like to set additional cookies so we can remember your preferences and understand how you use our site.
You can manage your preferences and cookie settings at any time by clicking on “Customise Cookies” below. For more information on how we use cookies, please see our Cookies notice.
Your cookie preferences have been saved. You can update your cookie settings at any time on the cookies page.
Your cookie preferences have been saved. You can update your cookie settings at any time on the cookies page.
Sorry, there was a technical problem. Please try again.
This site is a beta, which means it's a work in progress and we'll be adding more to it over the next few weeks. Your feedback helps us make things better, so please let us know what you think.
Request
Please could you provide the following information in regards to police recruits completing probation:
Q1. How many police officers have been taken on in the last five years? (Annual breakdown)
Q2. How many of those police officers have completed their probation periods? (Annual breakdown) Q3. What is the cost of training a police officer?
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 the information you have requested is held by North Yorkshire Police.
Decision
I have today decided to disclose the located information to you.
Q1. Please see the table below which details the number of new Police Officers recruited by North Yorkshire Police from 01 January 2019 to 31 December 2023, broken down by year.
2019 |
2020 |
2021 |
2022 |
2023 |
136 |
119 |
94 |
137 |
80 |
Q2 & Q3. 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. I have however decided to answer Q1 as a gesture of goodwill.
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 personnel files to determine how many of the officers mentioned in Q1 completed their probationary period. This would involve hundreds of files, which would exceed the time limit allowed under the Act.
Furthermore, the cost to train a single police officer is not recorded in such a way that can be extracted for the purposes of this request. To determine the cost to train a single officer we would need to interrogate a number of systems to extract the costs of all training materials used, the costs of training staff, as well as all other associated costs. This would further exceed the time 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). However, due to the information provided above I am unable to suggest how you may refine your request and still receive the 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.