Sarah’s Law (697A/23)
Request
- How many applications have been made to the force under the Child Sex Offender Disclosure Scheme, often referred to as Sarah’s Law, during the following years:
2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010.
- For each of the above years, please state how many disclosures about registered sex offenders have been made by the force.
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).
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 before it was realised that the fees limit would be exceeded (see attached). I trust this is helpful, but it does not affect our legal right to rely on the fees regulations for the remainder of the request.
REASON FOR DECISION
Please note that researching each individual case would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
Although we have quoted the application numbers for 2020, we would need to continue to do a manual search of all records to identify the number of disclosures made, as this is not in a searchable format. In order to locate and retrieve these records we would need to conduct a manual review of the remaining 137 records, if each record took 5 minutes to review we estimate this would take a further 11 hours and would exceed the FOI time limit.
The cost of compliance with the whole of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of locating and retrieving the information would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(1) of the FOI Act 2000. For West Midlands Police, the appropriate limit is set at £450, as prescribed by the Freedom of Information and Data Protection (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004, S.I. 3244.