FOI 777/25

REQUEST

 

I am seeking the following information for each of the calendar years listed below:

 

• 2023 (1 January 2023 – 31 December 2023)
• 2024 (1 January 2024 – 31 December 2024)
• 2025 to date (1 January 2025 – date of your response)

 

1. The total number of media enquiries received by your force’s press or communications office during each of the above years.
   
   
2. The number of those media enquiries that received no substantive response — meaning the press office did not issue any reply, or only sent a holding response without following up with a proper answer.
   
   

For clarity, a holding response is defined for this FOI as an acknowledgement of the enquiry but no further action or reply is provided thereafter.

3. The current number of staff employed in your press or communications office (full-time and part-time only).

 

RESPONSE

 

The News Team endeavours to respond to all media enquiries and will always provide information depending on the circumstances of an incident or investigation. Updates are provided when necessary and appropriate. We receive many enquiries where the police are not the most appropriate agency to answer the enquiry and these would be referred to the most appropriate agency, for example the fire service, ambulance service, trading standards, highways.

 

Question 2

 

Your request for information has now been considered and I am not obliged to supply the information you have requested.       

 

Section 17(5) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 requires South Wales 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.

 

In relation to your particular request, the following exemption applies:

 

Section 12 – Exemption where cost of compliance exceeds appropriate limit.

 

We have consulted with our Corporate Communications Department who have provided the below response.

 

This would require us to go through every enquiry and check responses for every enquiry.

 

There were 8,455 enquiries received over the requested time-period and we estimate that it would take approximately 5 – 10 minutes to interrogate each enquiry.

 

We therefore estimate that it would take in excess of 704 hours to answer question 2 of your request.

 

Please note, responses to media enquiries are not categorised as “holding” or a “proper answer” and therefore, there is no way to easily retrieve this information.

 

It is estimated that the cost of providing you with the information is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the "appropriate level" as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.

 

In the case of the police service, the appropriate limit is £450 which has been calculated to equate to a total of 18 hours of work.

 

If any part of the request exceeds the fees limit then Section 12 applies to the whole request.

 

In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a refusal notice.

 

Excess cost removes the forces obligation under the Freedom of Information Act, however under Section 16 – Duty to provide advice and assistance, an authority is required to offer an applicant the opportunity to redefine their request within the cost limit. If you were to resubmit your request asking for questions 1 and 3 only, we may be able to assist.