Mental Health Act – Place of Safety (758A/23)

29 June 2023 | Incident and Crime Statistics

Request

Response

Our data are not organised in such a way as to allow us to provide all this information within the appropriate (cost) limit within the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act (see ‘Reason for Decision’ below).

However, 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 file 758A_23_attachment.pdf). This provides the requested information for questions 1 and 2, but for a reduced time period and by financial year as opposed to calendar. 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

Regarding questions 1 and 2, although we have been able to provide the requested information for the last two financial years, this information wasn’t centrally collated prior to this time. As a result, to determine the requested information for previous years would require manually going into custody logs. This however would involve a trawl of thousands of records and such a search would far exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).

This means that the cost of compliance with this part 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.

Additionally, regarding question 3 of your request. I note that you ask for ‘Any correspondence between the police force and the Home Office regarding time spent by the police force attending to people experiencing a mental health crisis or who needed to be detained under the Mental Health Act since October 2022’. However, although very unlikely, technically this could cover every employee of West Midlands Police. Therefore, to definitively establish what information we hold in relation to this question, we would need to carry out a search of all correspondence (email, letter etc.) sent and received by any member of staff or officer in the last eight months. This though would be a huge undertaking, requiring a search of records held on any of the force’s systems and which would once again far exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).

This means that the cost of compliance with this part of your request is above the amount to which we are legally required to respond, i.e. the cost of confirming or denying that the information is held would exceed the appropriate costs limit under section 12(2) 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.

Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here:

https://www.college.police.uk/app/information-management/freedom-information#fees-and-charges

To try and assist further with question 3, I can advise that I have contacted the Mental Health Tactical Advisor Unit, as they would be the department most likely to hold information relevant to this question. They have confirmed that there has been no correspondence between themselves and the Home Office regarding time spent by the force attending to people experiencing a mental health crisis or who needed to be detained under the Mental Health Act.

Attachments

758A_23_attachment