FOI 0818-2024/25- Police uplift

Request:

I am requesting two sets of data under the FOI Act relating to recruitment for the Police Uplift Programme for its entire duration, from when your force began Uplift recruitment in 2019 up until its completion in March 2023 (or for as much of that period as you can provide).

Q1. The first dataset is for APPLICATIONS to your force as part of Police Uplift.

Q2. The second is for APPOINTMENTS made to your force as part of Police Uplift.

Please would you provide me with these complete datasets, broken down according to both gender and ethnicity. Please could you present this data in a cross-tabulation that allows me to see the numbers of entries combining these characteristics, e.g. the number of Black women who applied, or the number of Pakistani men who were appointed.

I am aware that different forces have collected ethnicity data in different subcategories at different times. Please provide the data in as detailed a breakdown as your force collected it.

PLEASE NOTE that while appointment data for Police Uplift is publicly available, it is not available in the detail or format requested (combining both gender and ethnicity breakdowns). I therefore ask that you provide me with this directly rather than referring me to information already publicly available.

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.

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.

 

Due to the many different entry routes into the service in regard to the uplift of officers. In order to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to run numerous reports across multiple vacancies all with hundreds of applications and to then break this down in gender and ethnicity and also to be able to establish when an officer was appointed in the role, 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). 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.