FOI 6525-25 Workplace sexual harassment
Request:
1. How many incidents of workplace sexual harassment get reported to the police in a calendar year?
2.What type of incidence of workplace sexual harassment are most commonly reported?
3.What is the most typical outcome when workplace sexual harassment is reported?
4.Where are victims of workplace sexual harassment referred to after they report an incident?
Clarified:
2023-2024
Response:
Northamptonshire Police systems are designed primarily for the management of individual cases and not for the production of statistical information for Freedom Of Information responses.
Sexual Harassment (any unwanted conduct of a sexual nature) could be recorded as any one of the following:
Public Order – S4A Words/behaviour to cause harassment / alarm / distress
Harassment without violence
Harassment – Put in fear of violence
Racially / Religiously aggravated intentional harassment / alarm / distress
To establish if the harassment is of a sexual nature and whether it is occurring within the workplace would require a review of all occurrences.
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Northamptonshire 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.
The exemption applicable to the information requested is:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
The information you are requesting is not held by Northamptonshire Police in any reasonably retrievable form. The only means of establishing information of the nature you are requesting would be by way of manual examination of each record. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer ran report which captures any information recorded upon the surface of a record or within specified fields. Where relevant information is held deeper in the record, or outside of a specified field, a manual assessment is usually required to retrieve that information.
It is my assessment that the cost of providing you with the information requested would exceed the 'appropriate level' as set out in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
My assessment is that it would cost 11,700 (approximate number of records) x 3 minutes each (minimum) = over 585 hours at £25 per hour to respond to your request, which exceeds the 'appropriate limit' (currently £450 for 'prescribed costs').
In view of the above, and in accordance with the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, please take this letter as a Refusal Notice.
You may wish to refine and resubmit your request so that it reduces the costs shown above and is then within the 'appropriate limit' shown above. You could specify keywords for us to use in a search. As with any keyword search, the search will only return exact matches. This does not account for differences in terminology and/or spelling used. Keyword searches are problematic and in no way provide accurate results or figures. If the selected key words have not been mentioned the data will not be returned. Vice versa, if the key words have been mentioned in an unrelated context irrelevant data will be collected. If you would like some further information about how to proceed with your request then please contact: