Police officer sick leave 454/2025

FOI Reference: 454/2025

Request

How many officers took sick leave for depression, anxiety, stress or post-traumatic stress between April 2024 and March 2025. By this, I mean where any of the terms depression, anxiety, stress or post-traumatic stress appear in the description of the officer's illness.

Response

Section 1 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 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 the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Dyfed Powys Police, when refusing to provide such information (because the information is exempt) to provide you the applicant with a notice which:   (a) states that fact, (b) specifies the exemption in question and (c) states (if that would not otherwise be apparent) why the exemption applies.

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information you have requested. However, we are withholding the whole of the requested information since we consider that the Section 12(1) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

Section 12 (1) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

Section 12(1) states: “…Section 1 (1) does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.”

The cost of providing you with the information requested in respect of your request is above 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. It is estimated that it would exceed 18 hours (i.e. minimum of 23 hours) to comply with this part of your request. The regulations can be located @ https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2004/3244

The Freedom of Information department has been advised that the information in respect of your request is not held in an easily retrievable format. In light of this and in order to accurately obtain the information relative to your request for the time frame stipulated would involve Dyfed Powys Police accessing and manually reviewing 142 records, due to the following reasons:-

Sickness recording within Dyfed Powys Police is not split into the individual conditions – for example as Diabetic Condition, Gout or PTSD, but overarching categories such as Cardiac/Circulatory or Metabolic (Diabetic Condition), Musculoskeletal (Gout) or Psychological Disorder (PTSD) etc.

Within each of these categories there can be a number of other health concerns – for example within Psychological Disorders category, there are 54 mental health conditions listed.

The information to answer the specific question would require a review of all absences categorised within Psychological Disorder category.   

It has also been established that it would take a minimum of 10 minutes to review and obtain the information for a single record in respect of your request. 

Please note:

In addition there maybe circumstances whereby further information would be required from contact records, Occupational Health records and Fit Notes submitted. This is likely to add additional time to the above estimate.

The process outlined results in the below time estimate.

2024/25 = 142 psychological absence sickness records x 10 minutes per record = estimated to take over 23 hours in order to re-categorise all the absences as per this FOI request.

Time estimate to complete task = 23 hours

In accordance therefore with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for the Whole of this request under Section 17(5) A public authority which, in relation to any request for information, is relying on a claim that section 12 or section 14 applies must, within the time for complying with section 1(1), give the applicant a notice stating that fact.

You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the time shown above to fall within the 18 hours, should you require any further advice in relation to this matter please don’t hesitate to contact the Freedom of Information Unit. Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the public authorities right to cite exemptions if relevant.

It should be noted that as a result of the systems adopted by Dyfed-Powys Police in relation to the recording of such information that the information released may or may not be accurate.

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 08/05/2025)