BAME promotions 176/2025

FOI Reference: 176/25

Request 1 - 3:

1          How many minority officers and staff, categorised by race ethnicity, were promoted each month from January 2022 to January 2023.

2          How many minority officers and staff, categorized by race and ethnicity, joined the police service each month from January 2022 to January 2023?

3          How many changes to recruitment or promotion policies were made annually since January 2022? What months? Please specify how many were directly linked to recommendations from diversity reviews or external pressures.

Clarification: Please may you include both temporary and permanent promotions but keep these in separate columns so that this difference can be identified

Response 1:

I can confirm that Dyfed-Powys Police does hold the information requested; however we are exempting part of that 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.”

General Data Protection Regulation

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

“1. ‘Personal data’ shall be

(a) Processed lawfully, fairly and in a transparent manner in relation to the data subject (‘lawfulness, fairness and transparency);

(b)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 requested information concerning Minority Ethnic (ME) officers and staff, considering the low numbers of ME officers and staff employed by the force, would lead to the identification of those individuals. To release such information would be a direct breach of Data Protection legislation 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.

Due to the low numbers returned, specific ethnicity data and the month of promotion has been removed from the table below in order to protect the identity of individual concerned.

Please note: Confirmation of Promotion under National Police Promotion Framework

Response 2:

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

Please note: As per my response to Question 1, I am exempting a monthly breakdown of this data pursuant to Section 40(2) – Personal Information in order to maintain the anonymity of individuals.

Response 3:

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

The force’s Recruitment & Selection Policy has been updated twice since January 2022, in September 2022 and in May 2024. Neither of the updates were directly linked to diversity reviews or external pressures.                                               

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 07/03/25)