Police staff suspended with full pay due to misconduct allegations 2018-23
Request
1. The number of police officers and police staff suspended with full pay due to misconduct allegations during the financial years 2018-19; 2019-20; 2020-21; 2021-22; 2022-23
2. The total amount paid in wages to officers and staff who were suspended with full pay due to misconduct allegations during the financial years 2018-19; 2019-20; 2020-21; 2021-22; 2022-23
3. The average time it took the force to investigate and close misconduct allegations during the five-year period mentioned above, including how long it took (in days) for the lengthiest investigation to conclude
4. The number of officers and staff who were dismissed due to misconduct during the period and the number of staff and officers who left the force but would have been dismissed during the period
Response
Q2 - Our data is 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 exemption applies to the disclosure of the information:
Section 12(1) – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit
Q2 - Costs against suspended posts are not held separately, to extract this data would require checking the individual 151 officers (Q1), their posts by rank/grade and then work out the timeframes of the suspensions to extract a cost of wages paid.
This data is held across two departments PSD and Finance and would require cross referencing two department systems initially for officer details, and then further reviewing each officer’s finance details to locate and extract the detail.
This process would exceed the 18hr rule allowed by the Act. At a very conservative 10 mins for each officers records held over two departments and systems would take in excess of 25hrs.
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:-
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.
Our Professional Standards Department have been able to provide a partial response for information extracted prior to the realisation that completing the request in its entirety would exceed the time obligations.
Q1
- 2018-19; 29
- 2019-20; 33
- 2020-21; 29
- 2021-22; 26
- 2022-23 34
Please consider refining your request taking into account the above exemption.
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.
Internal