Interpreters (126A/20)
Request
Please can you advise me how much your police force spent on interpreters from Feb 2015 to March 2020 financial years. Interpreter here refers to oral interpretation only.
Response
Please be advised that the information that you have requested is not available in a readily retrievable format. In relation oral interpretation as the force is invoiced for the total of interpretation services supplied to the force All Invoices from supplier would need to be manually retrieved and reviewed to see if the invoice detailed a breakdown of the services provided, and a manual calculation completed, data would need to be created to provide a total, under FOI there is no obligation for us to create data if this information is not already recorded in that format.
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 information in relation to the total Interpreter costs for the past 3 years
2017-18 £989,322.44
2018-19 £966,132.86
2019-20 £910,862.05
In relation to the financial year 14/15 15/16 and 17/18 we are unable to advise if this held in a retrievable format and if this would exceed the cost threshold to retrieve this. The reason for this is our finance system was changed some years ago and this information would be held on a legacy system. Colleagues currently do not have access to this as a result of working away from the office as a result of the Pandemic. .
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:
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