FOI Social Media Costs (1185-2023/24)

Request

Clarification received 04032024
I wanted to make some clarifications:

Q1: For the staffing costs breakdown, please include a section for staff who work full time on social media and a section for people who have it as part of their job description. For the people who work on it part time, include the full staffing cost for them.

So the breakdown will be:

- Staff costs (full time SM)
- Staff costs (part of roll SM)
- Software costs (please indicate what software you use)
- Advertising costs
- Then any other relevant category breakdowns you can provide

Please also limit the data to the team that deals the most with PR and Communications, for example the Comms team or the Media team. I don't need data collated from several team across the police force, unless you don't have a central teams that deals with social media / PR / Comms.

For Q2 I would like:
1) the number of people who work full time on social media (full time equivalent)
2) the number of people who have social media as part of their roles (full time equivalent), and what % of their time they spend on social media related activities (can be an estimate).

Original request received 13022024
I would like to request all the following numbers for these years: 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.

1) Total spend on social media (including staff costs, software, paid ads etc)
2) Number of staff employed to work on social media (full time equivalent)
3) Total spend for PR and communications inc. social media (including staff costs, software, advertising etc)
4) Number of staff employed in the PR and communications team (full time equivalent)

Regarding parts 1 and 3 ideally I would like this broken down into categories such as:

Staff costs (e.g salaries, training, travel expenses) Software costs (e.g monitoring and scheduling tools) Advertising costs (e.g paid facebook ads, printed materials) Then any other relevant category breakdowns you can provide.

If this is not practical then under your section 16 duty to advise and assist I would expect you to contact me to discuss how you record this financial data so that I can narrow my request in a way that works for both of us.

If you cannot provide all the data within the specified time and budget constraints, then you can focus on the years 2021, 2022, 2023.

Response

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within North Yorkshire Police to locate relevant information. 

Decision

Your request for information below has now been considered. In respect of Section 1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) we can neither confirm nor deny if North Yorkshire Police does or does not hold the information you have requested. It is estimated that the cost of complying with your request for information would exceed the “appropriate costs limit” under Section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

Section 12 (2) allows a public authority to refuse a request where it estimates that it would exceed to appropriate limit to either comply with the request in its entirety or confirm or deny whether the requested information is held.

North Yorkshire Police do not have any roles dedicated solely to social media content. Several employees in our Corporate Communications team contribute to the Force’s social media content. It is of note that Corporate Communications are not a PR team or Social Media team, they deal with all communications as well as assisting with frontline policing. Social Media is a tool utilised to perform such functions. 

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.