Vetting Management form - 728/2021

Request:

 

In the time period, 1st January 2000*, to 31st December 2020 (inclusive of these dates), can you please provide monthly counts of the following:

 

• Members of currently employed staff who having completed a management vetting form (or similar internal vetting form), subsequently went on to have a vetting interview based on the data supplied.

• Members of currently employed staff who following the completion of the form (as detailed above) or interview, were arrested because of the information supplied.

• The outcome of the arrest (Acquitted / NFA / Prosecuted/ etc)  

 

* If the force does not retain the information this far back, please list from the earliest month possible 

 

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 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 364.66 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, if any, is recorded in relation to the whole request would exceed the appropriate time limit i.e. 18 hours. This is due to the fact that Dyfed Powys Vetting Unit was not established until 2006. Between 2006 and 2012 all vetting forms were paper based. The Vetting database was created in October 2012 and it wasn’t until 2015 that the paper were scanned on the database. There are currently 1094 Management Vetting records held on the database, not including the paper forms prior to 2012. The only way to confidently check to see if a person was given a vetting interview would be to check each and every single application. This would involve retrieving the paper records between 2006 and 2015. At this stage it is unknown how many records there are between 2006 and 2015.

However for total applications received during 2015-2020 would require an individual interrogation of all applications recorded during the specified timeframe.

It has been established that there is a total of 1,094 records that would require individual interrogation and it has been estimated that it would take up to 20 minutes to research each individual record. The relevant time estimate is detailed below:

 

2015-2020:      1094 records x 20 minutes per record = 364.66 hours.

 

In order to review and obtain information held between 2006-2015 would be an additional time estimate however the total number of records has not established due to the fact that these are paper based.

Total number has not been established as this request already greatly exceeds the 18 hours.

Therefore total time estimate to complete whole request = at least 364.66 hours.

 

 In addition, please be advised that the Freedom of Information Unit have been informed that there is no information held relating to any records prior to 2006.

 

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.