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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 765-2023
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 16th August 2003 as follows:
Q1. For the periods of April 2020 to March 2021, April 2021 to March 2022, and April 2022 to March 2023, please provide any monitoring data your force gathers about the time that elapses between the calls that are made by your officers to the local Defence Solicitor Call Centre (‘DSCC’), or centres if there are more than one, seeking duty solicitors and accredited police station representatives to attend on detained suspects and the time those solicitors and representatives take to actually arrive at the station and attend those suspects. Please note, we are not seeking information that enables identification of any solicitors, their firms or suspects, only the specific data requested. If such data cannot be provided, please confirm whether or not it exists.
Q2. For the same time periods, please provide any monitoring data your force gathers about the number of occasions on which detained suspects request advice and/or representation from duty solicitors and/or accredited police station representatives but then change their minds before those solicitors or accredited representatives are called or, if they have been called, before they arrive at stations and attend suspects. To be clear, by ‘change their minds’, we mean that the suspects decide to waive rights to legal advice or representation which they had initially chosen to exercise. Again, we are not seeking information that enables identification of any solicitors, their firms or suspects, only the specific data requested. Again, if such data cannot be provided, please confirm whether or not it exists.
Q3. For the same time periods, please provide copies of any correspondence where any concerns were expressed by officers of your force to representatives of the local DSCC or the Legal Aid Agency about the time taken by duty solicitors and/or accredited police station representatives to attend on suspects detained at police stations staffed by officers of your force. Again, if such data cannot be provided, please confirm whether or not it exists.
Q4. For the periods of April 2020 to March 2021, April 2021 to March 2022, and April 2022 to March 2023, please provide any responses from the local DSCC or the Legal Aid Agency to the correspondence covered by the Third Request above. Again, if such data cannot be provided, please confirm whether or not it exists.
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, places two duties on public authorities. Unless exemptions apply, the first duty at Section 1(1)(a) is to confirm or deny whether the information specified in a request is held. The second duty at Section 1(1)(b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held.
Warwickshire Police are unable to confirm whether or not any information is held in relation to Q3 and Q4, and Section 12(2) applies.
Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”
In order to determine if such information is or is not held and, if held, to ensure that all information is located, it would be necessary to make enquiries with all teams and units within Warwickshire Police who would then be required to conduct searches of all systems, documentation and communication held. As you will appreciate, this would take an inordinate amount of time and, therefore, the cost of complying with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) would be above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please treat this letter as the Refusal Notice I am required to provide to you in respect of your request. Please note that if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit, then Section 12 applies to the whole request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to refining your request. However, due to the extent of the searches required to even determine whether information is held, and then, if so, to determine that all information has been located, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one which could be provided within the fees limit.
Outside the Act, and as a gesture of goodwill, a response to Q1 and Q2 has been provided below. Please note that this was located before it was realised that not all of the information could be retrieved within the fees limit and should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests.
Q1 and Q2 response: Please be advised that Warwickshire police do not hold any monitoring data relating to the time elapse from when a request for a solicitor or representative has been made and their arrival, or the number of times that detained suspects request legal advice or representation and then change their minds, therefore, our response to these questions is ‘no information held’.
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB