FOI 19664-25 SARs
Request:
Of the percentage of subject access requests sent to the data protection team in the past 5 years, what percentage were successfully processed within the time limit set by the regulations, and what was the percentage each year?
Response:
Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires Northamptonshire Police, when refusing to provide information (because the information is exempt), to provide 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 Subject Access Request record. Our information retrieval process generally relies on a computer-run 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 over £2550 to respond to even part of your request, which exceeds the 'appropriate limit' (currently £450 for 'prescribed costs'). Between 1 January 2023 and 6 August 2025, Northamptonshire Police received 2044 Subject Access Requests. 2044 records x 3 minutes each (minimum) = 102.2 hours at £25 per hour. As the number of requests
over the full five years is higher than 2044, the full cost of responding to your request would be even greater.
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'. If you would like some further information about how to proceed with your request then please contact:
Please also note that percentage figures are not held and there is no requirement under the Freedom of Information Act to create these in order to respond to a request.
Due to the different methods of recording information across forces, a specific response from one constabulary should not be seen as an indication of what information could be supplied by another. Systems used for recording these figures are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data. For this reason, responses between forces may differ, and should not be used for comparative purposes.
The numerical data presented in this response is an unaudited snapshot of unpublished data sourced from "live" systems and is subject to the interpretation of the original request by the individual extracting the data.
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.
The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when the data is used.