schedule 47 of the Children's Act 732/2021

Request:

 

For each of the year 2019 how many investigations under section 47 of the Children Act 1989 involved any of these terms in the referral:

- Fabricated or Induced Illness or FII

- Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy or MSbP

- Perplexing Presentation or PP

- Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another or FDIoA

- Snomed Code System Concept Code: 95637005

 

How many of those investigations led to a child protection plan, and how many resulted in no further action being taken?

 

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.

 

Dyfed-Powys Police are unable to confirm or not whether we hold information relevant to your request, since we consider that the Section 12(2) exemption the Cost of Compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit applies to it.

 

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.

 

Section 12(2) – The cost of compliance exceeds the Appropriate Limit

 

Section 12(2) states: “…Subsection (1) does not exempt the public authority from its obligation to comply with paragraph (a) of section 1(1) unless the estimated cost of complying with that paragraph alone would exceed the appropriate limit.”

 

The cost of providing you with the information requested in respect of the whole 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 110.90 hours) to comply with this part of your request. The regulations can be located @

www.legislation.hmso.gov.uk/si/si2004/20043244.htm

 

The Freedom of Information Unit has been advised by the relevant department that in order to establish what information is recorded, if any, in relation to the whole request would exceed the appropriate time limit i.e. 18 hours. This is due to the fact that an individual interrogation of all records recorded under the relevant category would be required in order to establish if the requested information is recorded for the 2019 year.

It has been established that there are a total of 2,218 records recorded during the specified time period and it has been estimated that it would take a minimum of 3 minutes to interrogate a single record to establish if any information is held relevant to the request. The relevant time estimate is detailed below.

 

                       2019:   2,218 records x minimum of 3 minutes per record = 110.90 hours.

 

• Therefore total time estimate to complete whole request = 110.90 hours

 

In accordance 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 me.

Please also be advised that should the request be refined, it does not remove the Force’s right to cite exemptions if relevant.