FOI Child Protection Orders (0206-2022/23)

Request

In cases where a child is placed under a Child Protection Order, NYCC will hold a number of child protection conferences to:

- share information between all the professionals who are working with your family

- decide how to keep the child safe

decide if a child protection plan should be drawn up for the child

This is a multi-agency meeting with, amongst others, parents, social workers and the police.

While it is recognised that not all agencies need to attend each meeting, please could you provide the following information:

1. Does North Yorkshire Police get asked to attend all conferences where there is CPO ?
2. How many conferences has it been invited to in the last 6-months, and how many had North Yorkshire Police attendance in-person ?
3. In addition to attending the conference, North Yorkshire Police are asked to provide a report. How many reports have been submitted in the last 6-months, and how many were of no substantive content (saying nothing to contribute.) 

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.

With specific reference to the second part of your Question 3 - “and how many were of no substantive content (saying nothing to contribute)?”, to retrieve the requested information, it would be necessary to read and assess hundreds of individual reports to ascertain this data, 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). In this instance, if you were to re-submit your request and omit the part of question three which asks (in relation to police reports submitted to Initial Child Protection Conference’s), and how many were of no substantive content (saying nothing to contribute.) we should be able to provide the information for the remainder of this 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.