NIP and FPN data for 2021,2022 & 2023

Request

1. Which three fixed position speed cameras in your area were responsible for
(i) the issuing of the most notices of intended prosecution (NIPs) to
suspected speeders in the combined three-year period of 2021, 2022 and
2023?

By this I mean which three cameras were the busiest across the entire
three-year period rather than which three were busiest in each year. Hence
the response should be just three camera sites and no more.

2. Please provide me with the position of each of the three cameras along with
the number of NIPs that each of these three was responsible for over this
three year period.

3. If possible please provide me with the number of (i) FPNs and (ii) driver
education courses that were accepted as ‘punishment’ by the people
issued with the NIPs at each of the camera sites identified by Question 1.

Response

Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide this information
within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see
‘Reason for Decision’ below).

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 exemptions apply to the disclosure of the information:

Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit

I approached South Yorkshire Police’s Safety Cameras and Ticket Processing
Department. Even if we could locate the data for Q3 by taking just 1 minute to review
each ticket this would take over 580 hours.

In essence, we would have to review and manually check all relevant incidents to extract the level of detail of the cases that met the criteria of your request; this process would take much longer than 18 hours’ work.

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. Please note point 30 of the below link:

https://ico.org.uk/media/for-organisations/documents/1199/costs_of_compliance_exceeds_appropriate_limit.pdf

Section 16 - Duty to Provide advice and Assistance

Under Section 16 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, my duty to provide advice and assistance to anyone making a request for information.

Although excess cost removes the force's obligations under the Freedom of Information Act, as a gesture of goodwill, I have supplied information, relative to your request, retrieved or available before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded.

I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of your request neither does it bind South Yorkshire Police to any commitment that it will release information in such a manner in the future.

We approached a data researcher from the Safety Cameras and Ticket Processing Department, who provided us with the following information:

1 & 2. Please see table below.

3. This would be cost prohibitive as each NIP would need to be checked for the outcome.

Please note, every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that data has been extracted from data sources used by this force for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording systems and information assets.

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/data for any requests may have limitations, and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

Police forces do not use generic systems or identical procedures for capturing the data. For these reasons this response to your questions should not be used for comparison purposes with responses you may receive from other police forces.