FOI Modern Slavery (0550-2022/23)

Request

Q1. How many allegations of modern slavery have been made to your force since 2014?
Q2. How many crime reports with the category of modern slavery have been made since 2014?
Q3. How many charges have been brought related to modern slavery since 2014?
Q4. How many convictions have been made related to modern slavery since 2014?

Please break this down by year, and if possible send in the form of an excel sheet.

Response

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 & 2. Please see the below table which shows the number of allegations of modern slavery from 1 January 2014 to 13 October 2022. Where an allegation of modern slavery is reported, a crime report will be recorded which is why the answer to both question 1 & 2 are the same.

Year	Number
2015	2
2016	1
2017	15
2018	54
2019	68
2020	72
2021	50
2022	76
Total	338

Q3. There have been 11 charges for modern slavery from 2014. I am exempting breaking this down any further pursuant Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). I have, however, provided other details relating to investigations to assist in your request, but maintain the elimination of any identification. Please see the exemption explanation below.

Q4. 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, prosecution data is held within the free text part of the crime report and is therefore not a searchable entity. A manual assessment of all crimes under the modern slavery heading would be necessary to ascertain which had successful convictions.

I have however provided you with the rest of the information required as a gesture of goodwill.

Exemption Explanation

Section 40 – Personal Information

Where an individual can be identified by such data, releasing it would clearly breach the first data protection principle of being ‘fair’ to the data subject.

Section 17 of the Act requires North Yorkshire Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which: (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Section 40(2) is an absolute class based exemption, which does not require a public interest test, but requires the balancing of the legitimate interests of the public against the interests of the individual under the first Data Protection Principle; in that processing of personal data must be lawful and fair (DPA 2018 35(1), EUGDPR Article 5(1)).

This exemption applies because the right given under the FOI Act to request official information held by public authorities does not apply to the personal data of third parties where disclosure of that information would not be fair to the individual, and where there is no legitimate public interest in disclosure.

In all the circumstances of the case it has been determined that the duty to the individual under the Data Protection Act 2018 & EU General Data Protection Regulations, and the public interest in maintaining the exemption from disclosure of personal information held by the force in such instances, outweighs the public interest in disclosure.  In this instance, personal information can only be disclosed to the individual concerned. 

Releasing personal details to a person other than the data subject would not only breach the data subject’s Data Protection rights it may also breach the obligations placed on an authority under the European Convention on Human Rights.

Pursuant to Section 17(1) of the Act this letter acts as a refusal notice under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 in relation to your request.

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.