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Request
Under Freedom of Information please could you answer the following questions.
From Jan 2023 to Sept 2024
Q1. How many media requests (BWF/Interviews/custody footage) have you receive through SAR and FOI? - please separate these figures for both FOI and SAR and provide a monthly breakdown
Q2. What department processes these request? Is it your own department?
Q3. If yes to own department please provide the details of the person in charge of editing the footage and the salary or pay scale they are on.
Q4. How many ICO complaints have you received in relation to Media requests.
Q5. Of those ICO complaints how many were NOT upheld and the reason why.
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, is not held 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 for Q1, it would be necessary to manually review thousands of individual files to determine if the request was for media footage including interviews, body worn video or custody footage, as this is not held within an automatically searchable field. This manual review 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.
As a gesture of goodwill, outside of the act I have decided to disclose some of the requested information to you.
Q2. The North Yorkshire Police Civil Disclosure Unit deal with requests for media footage.
Q3. There are a team of people who are responsible for redacting the footage. The salary of these employees is SO1 which is a scale of £33,915.00 to £35,982.00.
Q4. Information not held – you should redirect your request to the ICO
Q5. Information not held – you should redirect your request to the ICO
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.