11194 - Speeding

I write in connection with your request for information dated 11^th August 2019 and received by this office on that date.  Below are the questions raised in your request, and our response.

The top 10 highest recorded speeding offences within the past year (11th August 2018 - 11th August 2019 inclusive).

For each offence, please include the recorded speed, the speed limit of the road, and the name of the road.

a) WE have made enquiries with the Central Ticket Office (CTO) and they have provided the data below, they have also advised that there will have been higher speeds which will have gone straight to summons, bypassing CTO and we would not hold that data.

Speed recorded (mph)	Location	Speed Limit (mph)
107	A19 (N) Thornaby	70
99	Queen Elizabeth Way, Ingleby Barwick	50
98	A19 (S) Hartlepool	50
97	A19 (S) Dalton Piercy	70
97	A19 (N) Billingham	70
96	A19 (S) Billingham	70
96	A177 Thorpe Thewles	60
95	A689 Newton Bewley	50
95	A174 Middlesbrough	70
95	A19 Billingham	70
95	A19 Middlesbrough	70
95	A19 Hartlepool	70
95	A19 Hartlepool	70

I would also appreciate any recorded video or photographic evidence of the offences if it is available, but if this would exceed the financial limits of the request, then please ignore this part of the request.

a) We are unable to provide recorded video or photographic evidence due to Data Protection, this is because it was is put with any other information you may hold or obtain for other sources it could lead to the identification of an individual and therefore we would rely upon the following;

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) 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.  Where exemptions are relied upon Section 17 of FOIA requires that we provide the applicant with a notice which: a) states that fact b) specifies the exemption(s) in question and c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

Cleveland Police can neither confirm nor deny that it holds information pertinent to this request as the duty in Section 1(1) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemption:

Section 40(5) Personal Information

This should not be taken as conclusive evidence that any information that would meet your request exists or does not exist.

Section 40 is an absolute exemption, which means that the legislators have identified that harm would be caused by any release. In addition there is no requirement to consider the public interest test.

By way of explanation to you I would point out the following: Under subsection 2 of Section 40 of The Freedom of Information Act, information is exempt information if it constitutes personal information of which the applicant is not the data subject. In order to be considered exempt personal information, the information must satisfy one of two conditions. It must either be information which would be exempt from disclosure to the data subject under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998, or disclosure of the information would contravene any of the Data Protection Principles or cause damage or distress to the data subject.

On this occasion the information requested, recorded video or photographic evidence, is clearly personal information and would contravene the first principle of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) - lawfulness, fairness and transparency, what are the likely expectations of the data subjects, in that would they expect the Cleveland Police to release personal information/details to the world, since release of information under The Freedom of Information Act 2000, is release to the world at large and not just to the individual applicant and as such I believe to do so would amount to unfair processing and hence therefore is exempt under Section 40(2)(a).

Please note that any statistical data supplied in relation to Freedom of Information requests is a snapshot of data held at the time the request was received by the Freedom of Information office and is subject to constant change/updates.

The Cleveland Police response to your request is unique and it should be noted that Police Forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures to capture and record data therefore responses from Cleveland Police should not be used as a comparison with any other force response you receive.