Laptops
Reference number:
20110446
Request date:
08/2011
Response date:
23/08/2011 (All day)
Request details:
1) How many laptops have been reported lost or stolen in the past 5 years? (broken down year by year if possible)
2) How many lost or stolen laptops have been recovered by your authority in the past 5 years? (broken down year by year if possible)
3) How many lost or stolen laptops have been returned to their owner in the past 5 years? (broken down year by year if possible)
4) How many laptops have been stolen in the past 5 years? (broken down year by year if possible)
a. House
b. Public transport
c. Offices
d. Assault
e. Cars/other vehicles
Exemptions Applied:
Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
SYP response:
In accordance with 1 (1) (a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I can advise you that South Yorkshire Police holds the information you request.
Your request for information has been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested. Section 17 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Yorkshire 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 following exemption applies to the disclosure of the information:
Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
Information regarding ‘lost’ items is not held in a single, searchable electronic system. If a member of the public were to report that they had lost a laptop (or other item), this would be done at an Enquiry desk and staff would complete a paper record of the loss. The individual reporting the loss is given a reference number. Therefore, in order to address your question of lost laptops, a search would have to be done by District Staff based on the enquiry desk, and it would be necessary to look at each individual paper record to ascertain what was reported lost. This would be a time consuming process as, in the first 6 months of 2010, Sheffield district took 4322 reports of lost property. We can therefore expect to be looking through in the region of 40,000 records for the past five years for this particular district. With a very conservative estimate of five seconds per record to locate, retrieve and read through, this equates to 30 hours of work for Sheffield District - this exceeds the Appropriate Limit. There are three other districts within the Force area.
The Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004 provide that the cost limit for non central government public authorities is £450. This must be calculated at the rate of £25 per hour, providing an effective time limit of 18 hours.
Guidance from the Information Commissioner to public authorities is that where one part of a request is reasonably estimated to exceed the appropriate limit then the authority is not obliged to consider or comply with the remainder of the request up to the point at which the appropriate limit has been reached. This guidance is contained within the penultimate paragraph of page 4 of the guidance that can be found at: -
If you feel your endeavours can be achieved within the appropriate limit by refining your request, South Yorkshire Police would be more than happy to consider any further request.
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