FOI 489-2023 / May 2023 / Budget on Media, HR and advertising

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 489-2023

I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 9^th May 2023 as follows:

I'm writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act (2000) to ask that you please disclose to me how much has been spent by your force, by calendar year from 2018 through to the present, on media planning and buying, HR service, and advertising for the force, and with which companies please.

If possible, I'd also like this split into type of media, i.e print, digital, etc

On 9^th May 2023 a request for clarification was sent to you as follows:

Do you need information on advertising for HR services? Costs of advertising and cost of HR services? Companies supplying advertising?

On 11^th May 2023 you replied as follows:

So this would cover all outsourced contracts for media buying and planning, or advertising and HR services / promotional services for the forces run as media campaigns, for example this recent one with Manning Gottlieb with the met police, but the costs of those advertising would be good to include, and which companies there are, yes please.                               

Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.          

Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not centrally recorded and is therefore not held in a readily retrievable format. The business area has advised that costs associated with using media for advertising promotions or campaigns, such as for recruitment, are all recorded under the header of ‘Publicity Campaigns and Marketing’, within the finance records system. There is no further breakdown by type, and therefore the figures reflect the spend across the full spectrum of marketing and communications. In order to determine a response to your request, it would be necessary to manually review each entry and further research these using electronic and paper records to determine relevancy, and to provide an accurate spend for each supplier. Such searches would take an inordinate amount of time and would undoubtedly exceed the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’, as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.  For Police forces in the UK, the "appropriate limit" is up to 18 hours of work on one request.

In accordance with section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter is a Refusal Notice for this 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 volume of records which would need to be examined, I am unable to suggest a way to revise the request into one which could be managed within the fees limit.

As a gesture of goodwill, a breakdown of spend recorded under ‘Publicity Campaigns and Marketing’, which is held by financial year, has been set out below.  Please note that prior to 2020/21, the force was in a Strategic Alliance with West Mercia Police and paid 31% of the Alliance cost.  The figures below relate to Warwickshire only, i.e., 31% of the total Alliance spend; however, it is important to note that it is impossible to confirm whether all of the spend allocated to Warwickshire was actually accrued by Warwickshire.  For example, if the total spend was £10,000, £3100 would be allocated to Warwickshire; however, Warwickshire could have incurred, for example, £5000 or £2000 but, as part of the Alliance cost share arrangement, £3100 would have been allocated to Warwickshire regardless of actual accrual.

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

[email protected]