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Home - 17 December 2017 – 905.2017-18 – Fire service governance consultation

17 December 2017 – 905.2017-18 – Fire service governance consultation

Request:

Please release all data on the proposed merger/takeover of the fire brigade in North Yorkshire by the North Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner.

Response:

Extent of Searches to Locate Information

Following receipt of your request searches were conducted within the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to locate relevant information.

Decision

I am not obliged to provide you with a response to your request pursuant to Section 12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the Act). Please note that when one part of your request falls under Section 12, we are not obliged to review the rest of the questions and the whole request is therefore exempt.

Section 12(1) applies to your request as the cost of complying with your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of identifying and retrieving any relevant information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ as stated in the Freedom of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

Due to the nature of our recording systems the information requested, is not in an easily retrievable format. In order to provide all data held on this subject, it would be necessary to manually review all documents that could be relevant to this request, for example emails, staff notebooks, meeting minutes in which this matter may have been discussed, computer files which may reference this matter etc since discussions on joint governance began. This would therefore far exceed the Section 12 threshold.  

Pursuant to Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act this letter acts as a Refusal Notice.

Pursuant to Section 16 of the Act I am required to offer you advice and assistance with regarding to refining your request to within the ‘appropriate limit’ (time/cost limit). You may wish to request specific types of documents (eg meeting minutes) created within a certain timeframe.

The following links available on the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner’s website, and the links within those pages, may also be useful to you:

Please note that systems used for recording information are not generic, nor are the procedures used locally in capturing the data.  It should be noted therefore that the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner’s response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with any other responses you may receive.