Football Policing (1400A/23)
Request
1. The cost of policing Aston Villa Football Club’s home and away matches in the following seasons:
2019/2020
2020/2021
2021/2022
2022/2023
2. The cost of policing Wolverhampton Wanderers Football Club’s home and away matches in the following seasons:
2019/2020
2020/2021
2021/2022
2022/2023
3. The cost of policing West Bromwich Albion Football Club’s home and away matches in the following seasons:
2019/2020
2020/2021
2021/2022
2022/2023
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).
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). 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
We use one Sub Account code on our finance system to capture the costs for football clubs. Therefore, to identify and separate home and away costs would require us having to manually go through every single transaction in the general ledger. Such a search would exceed the appropriate limit (FOIA, s.12).
This means that 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.
Further information on section 12 of FOI is available here: