11205 - Business interests

I write in connection with your request for information dated 14th August 2019 and received by this office on that date.  Below are the questions raised in your request, and our response.

1. Please state any current secondary employments of police officers of your force, as reported under regulations 7-8 of The Police Regulations 2003. For each anonymised officer, please list the rank and employment disclosed (e.g., officer 1, inspector, security consultant, officer 2, constable, driver and so on.)
2. Please state any declared secondary employments or business interests of senior police officers of your force, reported under regulations 7-8 of The Police Regulations 2003. As senior officers do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy around their professional affairs under section 40 of FOIA, their name and rank should also be provided.

Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Cleveland Police when refusing such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you  the applicant with a notice which (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption and (c) states (if it would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption(s) applies.

Notice of Non-Disclosure:
We are not disclosing the above requested information pursuant to the exemption provisions of Section 21(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Section 21 of the Act (Information Reasonably Accessible by Other Means) states that information is exempt information if it is reasonably accessible to the applicant otherwise than under Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.  Section 21 is an absolute exemption and where information falls within the scope of an absolute exemption, a public authority is not obliged to communicate it to an applicant and is also not obliged to comply with the duty to confirm or deny the existence of the information requested.

We have looked at the content of question 1 of your request and must advise you that we consider the information is exempt under Section 21 of the Freedom of information Act 2000 (Information Accessible by other means.  This exemption is a class based, absolute exemption and there is no requirement for us to consider prejudice or a public interest.
If you visit the Cleveland Police website, www.cleveland.police.uk and on the top left of the home page you will find a menu button, type in Disclosure logs and a page will open and if you then search for business interests this is updated on a yearly basis.

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.

If you are not satisfied with this response or any actions taken in dealing with your request you have the right to request an independent internal review of your case under our review procedure. The APP College of Policing guidance states that a request for internal review should be made within 20 working days of the date on this response or 40 working days if extenuating circumstances to account for the delay can be evidenced.