FOI 990/24 Retired Police Vehicles
Dear Sir/Madam
Enquiry Reference: 990 - 24
I write in connection with regards to your Freedom of Information request. Below is your request and our response.
I am writing to you under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 to request the following information from Cleveland Police. Please may you provide me with:
List of all Police Vehicles which retired from your force between January 2014 and September 2024. Please provide Make/Model/Date of Retirement/Registration Plate or VIN/Length of Service/Type of Use.
Please provide the information in the form of Excel, CSV or PDF.
If it is not possible to provide the information requested due to the information exceeding the cost of compliance limits identified in Section 12, please provide advice and assistance, under the Section 16 obligations of the Act, as to how I can refine my request.
If you can identify any ways that my request could be refined I would be grateful for any further advice and assistance.
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 Sec 1(1) (b) is to disclose information that has been confirmed as being held. Where exemptions are relied upon s17 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.
Having made enquiries within the Force due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, is not in an easily retrievable format. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record. Where relevant information is held deeper in a record a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information. In this instance there is no automated report that we can run that will provide all the vehicle information requested, therefore, to determine such detail would require a manual search through around 500 records, across a number of data sources and taking approx. 6 minutes peer record.
The cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond and this falls under the exemption of 'Compliance exceeding the appropriate limit' covered by Section 12 (1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and as such this work could not be undertaken.
Therefore, please treat this as a refusal notice under S17(1) of the Freedom of information Act.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act we have a duty to provide advice and assistance to how your request can be amended to allow us to answer within cost.
Please be advised we could provide the make / model / date of disposal for the full 10 years or make / model / date of disposal / type of use for 5 years of data.
Please submit a new request if you require either of this data.
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 Freedom of Information Code of Practice (see below link) 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. Public authorities are not obliged to accept internal reviews after this date.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/freedom-of-information-code-of-practice
Yours sincerely
Information Rights Decision Maker