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FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 277-2023
I write in connection with your revised request for information which was received on 13th March 2023 as follows:
I'm writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) to ask that you please disclose to me the statistics on FOI refusal / acceptance rates from your force for 2022 as percentages, and the reasons for the exemptions given (law enforcement, cost limit, national security etc). raw data is fine, if that's the manner it's recorded in, but really just a list of the FOIs (without identifiable information attached) and whether they were accepted, refused, and why please.
Please accept my sincere apologies for the delay in providing the response to your request and for any inconvenience this may have caused. Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please see the attached spreadsheet, which contains details for all FOI requests made to Warwickshire Police in 2022. Where a response has been issued, the wording of the request has been provided, with details of the outcome and any exemptions used. In addition, statistics for all requests, including those where a response has been issued, as well as those that are ongoing, cancelled or invalid, have also been provided.
Please note that details have been provided in such a way so as to ensure that individuals cannot be identified, as provided in Section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act. Section 40(2) is an absolute class-based exemption, which does not require evidence of the harm disclosure would cause and does not require consideration of a public interest test. This exemption is engaged where disclosure of information relates to personal data of a third party or could lead to the identification of an individual, either from that information alone or combined with any other information from within the Police Service or public domain. In this case, due to the wording of some requests, disclosure without redaction is likely to identify an individual. Such a disclosure would breach an individual’s rights under the Data Protection Act 2018, in particular Article 5(1) of the GDPR which states that personal data shall be processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject.
When considering the attached information, please be advised that, where it was necessary to clarify any details with the applicant, the wording of the request may have been amended slightly before a response was issued. In addition, the outcome term ‘fully disclosed’ describes a response to the applicant which does not include any exemptions or excess fees considerations. This could therefore include a response of ‘no information held’ for all or part of the request. It could also include responses containing caveats explaining how the data was obtained and any explanations as to why the data may not be entirely reliable (i.e., where a keyword search was used). Finally, please note that where systems have changed and data is no longer available, the applicant will have been advised of this within their response. For example, if the request asked for data from 2017 and 2018, and we only had access to data from 2018 onwards, this will have been explained in the response, and the 2018 data given. On the attached spreadsheet, such requests will have been assigned an outcome of ‘fully disclosed’, providing no exemptions were applied.
Collating the response to this request took in excess of 18 hours of work to complete. The original scoping exercise, used to calculate the likely response time, did not identify certain issues, which made the review period longer for some requests. As a gesture of goodwill, the full 12 months of data has been provided, therefore taking us over the appropriate limit, as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
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