FOI 4121-25 Does our Force delete previous employee records

Request to Northamptonshire Police

Hello, it has come to my attention that some police forces remove data relating to personnel who are no longer working for them.

For example, if I asked in Sept 2024 how many officers had taken sick leave for mental health reasons in 2020 the response might be 200 - but if I asked exactly the same question in January 2025, that figure might change to 150 if 50 of those officers had since left the force.

Please could you let me know if your force carries out this practice, and if so, has it affected any of the data provided to my FOIs?

Response

Records are held by Northamptonshire Police until the individual reaches (or would have reached) 99 years of age.

The exceptions to this are: -
Health and Safety Medical Reports – Held for 40 years.
Sickness Records – Held until 72 years of age.
Personnel Service Records – Held until 100 years of age.

Having carried out reasonable searches against your previous Freedom of Information requests, please be assured that none of them will have been affected by our record deletion/retention policy.

If you decide to write an article or use the enclosed data, we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.