Missing Persons (932A/21)
Request
- As per the categories of data collected and published by the UK Missing Persons Unit and as per the template spreadsheet attached to this request titled “Missing people FOI template”, can I ask your force for the numbers of missing individuals over the past 5 financial years from 2017 to date, broken down into adult/child and also broken down by gender, financial year, ethnicity, whether that individual was the subject of a missing person report published externally by the force eg press release/social media/shared with Missing People charity/not published, the missing individuals’ risk level, vulnerability (eg CSE/mental health), the duration those individuals were missing, the nature of harm they suffered while missing, the numbers of fatal outcomes, who found them, the reason those individuals were missing.
- Please also include the Command & Control system used by the force e.g. STORM, Control Works and please state the Missing Person system used by the force e.g. NICHE, COMPACT.
- Can your force also please share with me a copy of its policy on when to publish and not to publish missing persons reports eg press release/social media/sharing an appeal with the Missing People charity?
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In relation to Publicity, Vulnerability, who found the individual and motive, we would need us to locate and retrieve each log and read the summary of the report.
Therefore 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 accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this part of the request and if one part of a request exceeds the fees limit then S12 of the Act applies to the whole request
However, In accordance with Section 16 of the Act I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request and can provide some of the information requested, please see attached.
This should not be taken as a precedent that additional information would be supplied outside of the time/fees legislation for any subsequent requests
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: