FOI 378/25

REQUEST 

Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am requesting information regarding investigations conducted by South Wales Police relating to sexual offenders working at Barry Island Pleasure Park and Coney Beach Porthcawl.

Specifically, I would like to request the following information:

1. The number of investigations conducted by South Wales Police relating to individuals with prior convictions for sexual offences who were employed at Barry Island Pleasure Park between January 1st, 2015, and the present date.

2. The number of investigations conducted by South Wales Police relating to individuals with prior convictions for sexual offences who were employed at Coney Beach Porthcawl between January 1st, 2015, and the present date.

For each investigation, please provide (to the extent permissible under the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act):

The date of the investigation.

A brief summary of the nature of the allegations.

The outcome of the investigation (e.g., charges filed, no further action).

The year of the offender's previous convictions.

3. If there are any records of investigations into the hiring practices of either Barry Island Pleasure Park or Coney Beach Porthcawl regarding the employment of individuals with prior convictions for sexual offences, please provide details of these investigations.

RESPONSE

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

In relation to your request, the following exemption applies:

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

We consulted with MOSOVO (Management of Sex Offenders and Violent Offenders) who have advised searches have been conducted on the ViSOR system for the requested information in terms of employment at both Barry Island Pleasure Park and Coey Beach Porthcawl. This search retrieved 0 results during the requested time frame. Please note this is likely due to either employment not being inputted correctly, employment not being disclosed to Offender Managers or the employment not being inputted to the system.

Whilst the majority of sex offenders are managed by MOSOVO with the data held on ViSOR we have looked into conducting a search on our crime and incident recording system (Niche RMS).  A manual review of all convicted sex offenders and their records would need to be conducted to retrieve the requested information. This would be a massive task as there are over 2,500 currently managed, as well as those who have been convicted but no longer managed.

Whilst I cannot quantify exactly how long this would take it would most certainly exceed the 18 hours stipulated by the regulations.

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. Unfortunately, due to the way in which data is recorded, we can see no feasible way in which you could refine your request.