Police Staff structure 36/2024

FOI Reference: 36/2024

Request:

I am writing to request details of police staff posts in your organisation (not individuals).

This request focuses on senior leadership posts, this means a police staff post (not officer), which sits within the top five grades of your existing police staff pay structure. Please include both filled and vacant posts.

Details required are:

1. Total number (established FTE) of police staff in current structures, including all posts across the force as of 1 April 2023 or later.
2. Details of senior posts across current structures, as of 1 April 2023 or later, as per definition above. Please provide:

a. Full job title

b. Total FTE allocated to each role

c. Grade or band

d. Department or function where post sits.

e. Current gross salary (excluding employer’s costs)

 

Response 1:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested, as outlined below.

Headcount: 705/ FTE: 657.42

 

Response 2 a & b & d:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested, as outlined below.

Position	FTE	Department
Head of Corporate Finance	1	Finance
Head Of Procurement and Contracts	1	Procurement
Head of HR Service Delivery	1	People Services
Head of Contact and Incident Management (Temp)	1	Territorial Policing
Senior Responsible Officer - Force Review Team (Temp)	1	Force Reviews
Head Of Forensic Services	1	Criminal Investigation Department
Head of Estates	1	Estates
Head of Legal Services	1	Legal Services
Head of ICT	1	ICT
Director of People and Organisation Development	1	ACPO
Director of Finance - ACPO	1	ACPO

 

Response 2 c:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested, as outlined below.

Grade	Number of positions detailed in Response 2a with said Grade
Scale K £63,288 to £67,428	6
Scale L £70,347 to £74,940	2
Scale M £78,198 to £83,332	1
Scale N £86,934 to £92,652	1
Scale O £96,675 to £103,134	1

 

Response 2 e:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested; however, we are exempting part of the information as we believe that the following exemption is relevant:

Section 40(2) Personal Information

Section 40(2) is a class-based absolute exemption. This means that the legislators when writing the legislation considered that the release of such information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 would cause harm to the public authority or individual concerned. There is therefore no requirement to carry out a HARM Test in respect of such information.  There is also no requirement to carry out a Public Interest Test.

Section 40(2) Personal Information:

Section 40(2) applies to third party personal data and is exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 if disclosure, in relation to data subject to law enforcement processing, would breach any of the data protection principles contained within Part 3 - Chapter 2 of the Data Protection Act 2018. Under Section 34 within Chapter 2 “The Controller in relation to personal data is responsible for and must be able to demonstrate, compliance with” Chapter 2.  Such information would not be released under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 unless there is a strong public interest. One of the main differences between the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Data Protection Act 2018 is that any information released under FOI is released into the public domain, not just the individual requesting the information and disclosure under the Act must be made with that in mind. As such, any release that identifies an individual through releasing their personal data, even third-party personal data is exempt.

Personal data is defined under Section 3 of the Data Protection Act 2018 as:

“(2) ‘Personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable living individual (subject to subsection (14)(c)).

(3) ‘Identifiable living individual’ means a living individual who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to—

(a) An identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data or an online identifier, or

(b) One or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of the individual.”

All members of the public including those employed by the force have an intrinsic right to privacy and these rights are protected by virtue of the Human Rights Act, the Data Protection Act 2018 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and a public authority must not interfere with that right. Any release of the information subject to the exemption is likely to compromise those rights.

Data Protection Act 2018

Part 3 – Law Enforcement – Chapter 2 Principles Section 35

The first data protection principle:

“(1) The first data protection principle is that the processing of personal data for any of the law enforcement purposes must be lawful and fair.”

UK - General Data Protection Regulation

Article 5 of the UK - GDPR – ‘Principles relating to processing of personal data’ provides:

“1. ‘Personal data’ shall be

• Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency);
• Collected for specified, explicit and legitimate purposes and not further processed in a manner that is incompatible with those purposes; further processing for archiving purposes in the public interest…

2. The controller shall be responsible for, and be able to demonstrate compliance with, paragraph 1 (‘accountability’).”

Dyfed-Powys Police would not want to disclose any information that could potentially identify an individual. In this particular case, to release the current gross salary, especially taking into consideration that there is only one employee per position, and collating information that is already in the public domain could lead to the identification of the individuals involved and to release such information would be a direct breach of Data Protection legislation. Therefore, as a consequence I am satisfied that Section 40(2) Personal Information exemption is applicable to the release of the information.

The Section 40 exemption is a class-based exemption. This means that the legislators when writing the legislation considered that the release of such information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 would cause harm to the public authority or individual concerned. There is therefore no requirement to carry out a HARM Test in respect of such information.  

The Section 40 exemption is in part qualified and in part absolute, in the present case it would be absolute as to release the information would breach Data Protection legislation and therefore there is no requirement to carry out a public interest test.

                                                                                                           

(This is a response under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and disclosed on 28/05/2024)