Request for the number of informal or formal complaints received by the OPCC in relation to poor managment of the Data Management/Information Services Team
Reference: 19008
Date Added: Friday, August 30, 2019
Category:
Disclosure Details
Question
Can you please tell me how many complaints, either formal or informal, via email or written letter, have been received by the OPCC within the two years (1st August 2017 - 15th August 2019) with regards poor* management within Gwent Police's Data Management Department/Information Services team?
*Poor management should be taken to mean any expression, indication or concern that the department is not running as efficiently as would be expected.
Answer
Thank you for your recent request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The request you submitted is as follows:
Can you please tell me how many complaints, either formal or informal, via email or written letter, have been received by the OPCC within the two years (1st August 2017 - 15th August 2019) with regards poor* management within Gwent Police's Data Management Department/Information Services team?
*Poor management should be taken to mean any expression, indication or concern that the department is not running as efficiently as would be expected.
This email is to inform you that it will not be possible to respond to your request within the cost threshold by virtue of section 12(1) of the FOIA, therefore in accordance with section 17(5) FOIA, this email acts as a Refusal Notice and closure of this request, reference number 19/08.
Section 12(1) “does not oblige a public authority to comply with a request for information if the authority estimates that the cost of complying with the request would exceed the appropriate limit.” The appropriate limit is set at £450, which is calculated at £25 per hour (i.e. 18 hours).
I am not able to respond to your request within the relevant cost limit as the data has been recorded by the type of dissatisfaction criteria (eg lack of update) rather than that of the department. Your request for information relates to a specific department and in order to provide you with a response to your request, we would need to access each dissatisfaction/concern recorded during the time period specified to determine if it related to the relevant department. Based on the fact there are over 1,000 complaints recorded during this time period and allowing 2 minutes per record to review, it is estimated that it will take more than 18 hours (1,000 recordsx2 minutes per record/60 (minutes per hour) = 33.33 hours in total); therefore we are unable to answer this question and the exemption stated above is engaged.
Section 16 of the FOIA places a duty on public authorities to provide advice and assistance to requesters in order to provide information within the cost limit. Would you be willing to consider shortening the timeframe that you are requesting the information for? For example by selecting a 1 year period of approximately 500 records (500x2/60 = 16.66 hours) would allow the request to fall within the limit. If you could confirm whether or not you would be happy to reduce the timeframe, please contact me and we can ensure that the number of records we need to search falls within the appropriate limit.
If a response is received from you, it will be treated as a new request under the FOIA and the 20 working day timeframe for a response to be provided will start again.
The Freedom of Information Act is a public disclosure regime, not a private regime. Any information disclosed under the Act is thereafter deemed to be in the public domain, and therefore freely available to the general public and will be published on the OPCC website.
I hope this information is satisfactory to your request however, should you feel dissatisfied with this response or the way in which your request was handled, information on the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for Gwent FOI Appeals Procedure can be found on our website: www.gwent.pcc.police.uk/en/transparency/know-your-rights/your-information-rights/freedom-of-information/appeals-process/